Beyond Infinity

About this book

By one of our most imaginative mathematicians, a mind-expanding trip through the beauty--and the mysteries--of infinity "Cheng does a great service by showing us non-mathematician schlubs how real mathematical creativity works." --Wall Street Journal Imagine something small enough to fit in your head but too large to fit in the world--or even the universe. What would you call it? And what would it be? How about infinity? Mathematician Eugenia Cheng has some answers. Whether pondering why some numbers are uncountable, or why infinity plus one is not the same as one plus infinity, Cheng takes readers on a staggering journey from math at its most elemental to its loftiest abstractions. Along the way she considers how you could use a cheeseboard to help plan a dinner part for 7 billion people, what it would mean to make a chicken-sandwich sandwich, and whether you could create infinite cookies from a finite ball of dough (the math says yes!). An essential book on the universe's biggest possible topic , Beyond Infinity will beguile and bewitch you, and show how one little symbol-- ∞ --can hold the biggest idea of all.