Why Math is Important in Life

The other night, a friend and I ordered a pizza at the bar. We were pretty hungry and the pizza was cheap, so we ordered a 12″ round pizza for the two of us. (Pepperoni, sausage, green peppers, and onions, though the toppings are immaterial.) A little while later, the waitress came by with an 8″ round pizza, explaining that another waitress had mistakenly given our pizza to someone else. She said we could have this 8″ pizza now, and she’d have the cook throw another 8″ pizza in the oven for us. She claimed that we’d be getting more total pieces of pizza, so this was a good deal for us.
After doing some quick mental math (area of a circle = pi*radius². Two 8″ pizzas = 2*pi*(4)² = 32*pi square inches, One 12″ pizza = pi*(6)² = 36*pi square inches), I told her we’d be missing out on over 12 square inches of pizza, so we’d rather just have the one 12″ pizza. She complied, and as a nice bonus (probably because she was impressed by my quick geometry skills), she let us have the extra 8″ pizza anyways. Score one for geometry!I know that math is used all of the time in personal finance situations - calculating per unit prices in the grocery store, figuring out payments on credit cards or mortgages, preparing your tax return, etc., but for some reason I was really proud of my quick math skills at thebar that night. I think sometimes the simplest things can be the most rewarding.


You could have worked that out without having to use pi at all, 12″ is 1.5 times bigger than 8″, so the area of a 12″ is (1.5 * 1.5) 2.25 times that of an 8″.
Two 8″ pizzas won’t cut it; you need a 4″ pizza too!