Calculus and Pizza: A Math Cookbook for the Hungry Mind

Do you want to do well on your calculus exam? Are you looking for a quick refresher course? Or would you just like to get a taste of what calculus is all about? If so, you've selected the right book. Calculus and Pizza is a creative, surprisingly delicious overview of the essential rules and formulas of calculus, with tons of problems for the learner with a healthy appetite.

Setting up residence in a pizza parlor, Clifford Pickover focuses on procedures for solving problems, offering short, easy-to-digest chapters that allow you to quickly get the essence of a technique or question. From exponentials and logarithms to derivatives and multiple integrals, the book utilizes pepperoni, meatballs, and more to make complex topics fun to learn-emphasizing basic, practical principles to help you calculate the speed of tossed pizza dough or the rising cost of eggplant parmigiana. Plus, you'll see how simple math-and a meal-can solve especially curious and even mind-shattering problems.

Authoritatively and humorously written, Calculus and Pizza provides a lively-and more tasteful-approach to calculus.

"Pickover has published nearly a book a year in which he stretches the limits of computers, art, and thought."
-Los Angeles Times

"A perpetual idea machine, Clifford Pickover is one of the most creative, original thinkers in the world today."
-Journal of Recreational Mathematics

If you have trouble understanding calculus, buy this, not a copy of Schaum's outlines. This will open you up to fundamental concepts, and once you have those down, reading any normal calculus text will be a breeze.

The book is also very poetic. Pickover is a great writer, besides being a great mathematician.


An Excellent, Practical Tour of Calculus   July 30, 2003
Rose Jordan (Princeton, NJ)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful

Calculus is very important today in many branches of science, economics, and other fields. I am a high school calculus teacher and will be advising all my students to get this book in the fall. It covers all the essential calculus material in a fun way, using pizza examples. Where else would you find a pizza chef teaching calculus? In what other books will you study meatballs rolling down Fifth Avenue? College teachers will also find this book useful, but you don't have to be in school to enjoy this book. My friends find this book useful for a review of calculus. The book contains lots of problems and answers to see if readers truly understand the material.

The simultaneous discovery of calculus by Newton and Leibniz makes the author wonder why so many discoveries in science are made at the same time by people working independently. I wonder about this too.


Great Fun. Great Education.   March 24, 2006
Eric B Cowan
7 out of 9 found this review helpful

I can only say that this was the most educational math book I have read, and I liked it for all the reasons the author gives: (1) Many beginner calculus books are too big. Most people don't read big books. However, this book is a comfortable size. (2) Many "popular" calculus books don't have exercises. The basic philosophy of Calculus and Pizza is learning by doing. (3) Most importantly, no Intro calculus books have a pizza chef teaching you. For example, in what other book will you find meatballs rolling down Fifth Avenue in New York City or pizza restaurants overrun by bacterial colonies run wild?

The other big selling point for this book are the numerous solved problems. These problems alone give the book a lot of "meat" -- if you pardon the pun.


Excellent for learning or reviewing the basics of calculus   February 28, 2006
Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States(cashbacher@yahoo.com))
5 out of 7 found this review helpful

Given the underlying mathematical rigor of differential and integral calculus, no popular book can ever truly explain it. However, it is possible to demonstrate a great deal of the foundations of calculus in a manner that can be understood by people with limited math backgrounds. A person with a solid understanding of college algebra will be able to understand nearly all of the formulas and concepts in this book, although the exponential and logarithmic functions may be too much.
As the title implies, the setting is that of a pizza parlor and the calculus problems often contain references to pizza terms. Phrases such as "the pepperoni is 10 feet from the lamp", "the meatball is growing at the rate of" and "the rolling meatball is accelerating at the rate of" keep the focus on pizza while calculus is being taught. There are problems at the end of each chapter and complete solutions are included in a final chapter.
This is a book that can give you the basic ideas of calculus or refresh your understanding if it has been some time since you learned it. The writing is excellent, the problems are well stated and entertaining and diagrams included when needed. It can serve as a review for a calculus exam but cannot prepare you for it.