Who would have thought that we may have been slicing wrong all these years? Well, perhaps less wrong than not the most optimal way for maximum satisfaction by all partakers. Rick Mabry and Paul Deiermann have long asked themselves what is the perfect way to slice a pizza.
An off center cut by the waiter could mean that your friend gets a few extra square inches of pie. The goal for Mabry and Deiermann was to find the perfect way to slice a circular pizza so that each piece is exactly the same size. Being mathematicians they are the two have worked since 1994 to perfect a theorem that takes into account all of the myriad possibilities.
Even if math doesn’t get you all giddy, it’s kind of amazing how the pizza theorem works out. If a pizza is cut three times, into six slices, the person who eats the piece with the pizza’s center will get more than everyone else. But if you cut it five times the opposite is true.
