From Keith Walters, Sydney, Australia
Katie Steckles’s article about “Pythagoras in the wild” reminds me of an interesting experience of encountering maths when buying cake tins. I got two “catering-sized” square ones from a commercial baking supplier. I was intrigued by the dimensions: about 360 millimetres per side. That figure didn’t seem to mean anything special. Neither did the equivalent 14.14 inches (27 April, p 44).
Then light dawned! 14.14 is the square root of 200, so those tins give you 200 square inches of cake, and, assuming a 1 inch by 2 inch serving, that comes to exactly 100 servings. Ideal for the “nothing left to chance” caterer!
