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The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza

Posted by samzenpus on 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."

7 of 282 comments (clear)

  1. squares by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    That is why the perfect way to cut a pizza is in small squares.

  2. Maybe by BeanThere · · Score: 4, Insightful

    a slightly foreign concept here, but usually the woman/women get(s) the smaller pieces and everyone's happy. Simple.

    1. Re:Maybe by Nadaka · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I am 6ft tall. My fiance is 4ft 9in and about half my weight. If I ate as little as she did, I would starve. If she ate as much as I did, she would pop. There is nothing misogynistic about it, women are on average smaller than men, they will eat less.

  3. Re:Unsure. by Ruede · · Score: 2, Insightful

    a standard grocery store pizza is too small for adequate sized 1/8th slices.

  4. Re:My Esperiement by Opportunist · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's no evidence. You have to take various factors into account like your current filling state, heat of the pizza on arrival and so forth. If you cannot standardize those parameters, you at the very least have to repeat the experiment a few hundred times to at least claim something resembling scientific value.

    You'll prolly die of arteriosclerosis, but it was for science!

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  5. Re:Divide it first by corbettw · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is an easy problem: have one person cut the pizza, and have the other divide the slices. That's about the easiest way in the world to make sure that the division is honest and fair.

    --
    God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
  6. Irrelevant by interploy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This isn't a problem in America. We each just get one to ourselves.