the kitchen and math?

Yes, you heard right. Well, at least according to author, Eugenia Cheng, in her book How to Bake Pi, who defines the term "math" by looking within the kitchen. And she begins to define "math" (in the Prologue) by addressing the common statements made about mathematics, using a simple recipe for clotted cream to prove these ideas to be myths. 

Cheng sways the readers own personal beliefs about what mathematics is by proposing her own term, category theory, also known as, "the mathematics of mathematics." Confusing right? I thought so too, but in a sense, math can't be defined by one thing. For example, math is not just about numbers, symbols, or even measurements. Rather, Cheng uses category theory to define math as being all about "relationships, contexts, processes, principles, structure, cakes, custards." If that isn't a more enticing Prologue to a book, I don't know what else is. So, naturally, I kept reading...

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CHAPTER 1: What is math? 

A familiar question that was recently addressed in my first blog post. However, Cheng tells me to "let go" of what I think math is, believing that her recipe for mathematics will forever re-define the term for me. Frankly, Cheng makes an interesting, yet profound comparison between math and recipes (like the one used to make these delicious looking brownies pictured to the right). Both math and recipes have ingredients and method. Cheng, therefore, presents two terms, abstraction and generalization, two processes that define the way math is done (because after all to understand math, we need to understand how math is done). She hints in this opening chapter that these two terms will be explored in further detail in the chapters to follow, but to wet your appetite, here is what Cheng says. In abstraction, "we work out how to think logically about something that logic otherwise couldn't handle," and in generalization, "we 

work out how to build more complicated things out of the things we've already understood." Mathematics and recipes are quite unique because both apply these two terms, which is how we come to define the process of math, resulting in the defining of mathematics. So, the reader (myself) is left with a hunger that can only be cured through the action of reading the next chapter. ​