Dan Look’s New Cat-Inspired Book Shows the Cute and Cuddly Side of Mathematics
When you cuddle up with your feline companion, do you think about mathematics?
You don’t? Well, Charles A. Dana Professor of Mathematics Dan Look does, and his creative new book, Math Cats: Scratching the Surface of Mathematical Concepts, might make you reconsider just how cute—ahem, acute—your cat can be.
The book, published by Hachette Book Group, uses cat puns to explain what Look likes to call bar math or coffee shop math—mathematical ideas that are easy to discuss over a beer or coffee and don’t require any sort of advanced mathematical background to understand.
“Each math topic in the book is ‘felinicized’—or infused with cat puns of varying quality—and paired with incredibly adorable cat illustrations that make the math even more approachable,” he says. In fact, Look doodled all the initial sketches in the book himself, about 90 percent of which remain in the final draft that the illustrator turned into the impossibly-cute artwork.
In total, the book contains 22 approachable mathematical concepts, ranging from the “Purrthagorean Theorem” to “Counting in Base-Mew.”
Look, who holds a Ph.D. in mathematics, also claims to possess a “DPurr” or a “Doctor of Purr-losophy” in cat studies, and lives with his own four inspiring felines: Conan T. Cat, Meow Meow, SpaghettiOs, and Mrs. Waffles. Naturally, the book was right up his alley.
But combining these passions for a broader audience took some crowd work. “I had to think very carefully about how much math you can meaningfully explain in just a few pages, and what non-mathy readers would actually find interesting,” Look says. That process, he explains, involved lots of testing concepts on unwitting friends and family.
“If I explained something to my wife and she fell asleep before I finished, that chapter was cut.”
Look’s humorous, conversational method of delivering serious topics flows from the way he teaches his classes at St. Lawrence, which include the calculus series to senior level electives and even courses on chaos, math and social justice, and topology, among unique others.
“I try to make math approachable and playful in the classroom, so in some sense the book is an extension of how I already think about teaching,” he says.
As such, despite the dozens of “serious” research articles he’s published on subjects like complex dynamics or stylometric analysis, Look considers Math Cats his magnum opus.
“This was the most enjoyable and fulfilling project of my career,” he says. “If I had to choose one piece of my work to go into a time capsule, I would choose Math Cats without hesitation.”
Math Cats is set to be released October 25, and is currently available on Amazon and other major online retailers for pre-order.
