From the "Purrthagorean Theorem" (Triangles) to "Loafing Around" (Topology) to "Lamp Breaker Blues" (Game Theory), Daniel M. Look--1 Ph.D., 4 cats, and 20 math-related tattoos--wants to demystify math, with feline help.
Who hasn't looked at their cat curled in a catnap and thought, oh, so perfectly shaped? Look sees the golden spiral, or a furry fractal. A cat leaps onto a ledge with (usually) perfect accuracy. Is it intuition, or the utilization of Euler's Method to approximate flight path? In the chapter "Divide Like an Egyptian," Pickles pushes a statue--the Eye of Horus--over to illustrate fractions. Chaos Theory is made for cats ("Does a Cat Eating a Butterfly in Kansas Prevent Tornados?"). In "Keyboard Cat," Mrs. Waffles likes to walk across keyboards, typing gibberish; what is the probability she will eventually write "LUV YOU"?
With whimsical drawings by Johanna Breuch, and side notes like why Pythagoras died avoiding a field of fava beans, Daniel M. Look has written a delightful book for both math nerds and math-phobes--and, of course, ailurophiles. --Marilyn Dahl