The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza 282
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the equal-distribution-of-the-pie dept.
from the equal-distribution-of-the-pie dept.
iamapizza writes "New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article; 'The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighboring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?' This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of 'sharing' a pizza."
Re:Unsure. (Score:3, Informative)
Mod parent +1, Yogi Berra.
Re:WTF (Score:2, Informative)
Re:4 whole pieces? (Score:5, Informative)
Thanks, that's the best laugh of the day. I've ordered $180 worth of pizza for dinner tonight (it's a dinner meeting for 35 people) and I was thinking about someone rolling these 18", 2" deep jumbos into a wrap.
Someone on /. has a sig that said:
A pizza with depth a and radius z has a volume of pi z z a.
Even-slice pizza cutter (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Unsure. (Score:2, Informative)
A metric pizza would have a circumference of 1 meter
Fine, then.
With a diameter of 100/pi
Okay...
you would have a radius of 50/pi
So far, so good...
an area of 10,000/pi cm2.
What? Re-check your math. r = 50/pi, and so r^2 = 62500/(pi^2). Therefore, the area is 62,500/pi cm ^2
After that, I have no idea how you got your area-per-person numbers, so I don't know how wrong they are.
Unrelated: the volume of a pizza of radius z and thickness a is pi*z*z*a
Re:Unsure. (Score:3, Informative)
She's actually smarter than you, socially.
She knew if she was ordering for three, a multiple-of-three slices would give each person the same amount. That's fair if you are sharing. If ordering for four, a multiple of four. If two, an even number.
Maybe she was even more advanced than that, knowing that "Joe will probably want two, Tom probably will only eat one, Marcia another one, and my pig-assed boyfriend will suck down four slices, no matter how big or small they are. I will make do with one, so that's 9 slices..."
She knew "screw the size of each piece", what mattered was the subjective fairness of the division of the pie.
Re:Unsure. (Score:2, Informative)
50 * 50 = 2500
So it's 2500/pi cm^2. And if each person gets 1/10, that's 250/pi cm^2, or about 79.6 cm^2.