Better Ways To Cut A Cake and To Pick A Champion

Science Talk

Scientific American

Science

4.2 • 644 Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2007

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, mathematician Michael Jones talks about improved methodologies for cake cutting. (It involves the equitability of the division, not the sharpness of the knife.) Los Alamos National Laboratory theoretician Eli Ben-Naim talks about relative competitiveness of professional team sports and devising more efficient schedules. Plus we'll test your knowledge about some recent science in the news. Websites mentioned on this episode include www.sciam.com/podcast; http://cnls.lanl.gov/~ebn; http://www.ams.org/notices/200611/fea-brams.pdf; http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=15&articleID=1373A988-E7F2-99DF-3DF48A64628C76E9 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is presented by eBay.
0:03.7	Rob, everyone loves a deal and a bargain from time to time, don't they? Absolutely, mate. And you know where you can grab a great deal? Talk to me. Where? The eBay app. Yes, you are correct. You didn't need to talk to me. I already knew it. I love eBay. When you're buying, you can discover loads of hidden gems. there's so many items where you think I would have never found that anywhere else.
0:23.7	Then when you're buying, you can discover loads of hidden gems. There's so many items where you think I would have never found that anywhere else. Then when you're selling, it's so simple and most
0:25.9	importantly, free. It's free, Rob. When it's this easy to sell for free and there's great deals
0:31.6	on things you love. You can't help but say when it's eBay. It excludes vehicles and business
0:35.9	sellers.
0:42.8	Welcome to Science Talk, the weekly podcast of Scientific American. For the seven days starting January 17th, I'm Steve Murski. This week on the podcast, the Los Alamos National Laboratories
0:48.7	Ellie Ben Naim discusses competitiveness in sports leagues and the optimal ways to make sure the best teams
0:54.6	really win.
0:55.6	And Montclair State University's Michael Jones talks about better ways to cut a cake.
1:00.6	Shh, don't tell anybody, but all this material is really math.
1:05.0	It's disguised as fun stuff like cake cutting and baseball schedules.
1:09.3	Plus, we'll test your knowledge about some recent science in the news.
1:12.5	First up, mathematician Michael Jones, on cake cutting.
1:16.2	I called him at his office at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
1:20.8	Professor Jones, thanks for talking to us today.
1:23.0	Good talking to you.
1:24.8	And you've got this paper, Better Ways to Cut a Cake, which does not sound like your typical math paper.
1:31.0	It isn't a typical math paper.
1:32.9	It's written with a couple colleagues, an economist, and a political scientist, and then I'm the mathematician.
1:40.4	So we use cake as really a metaphor for dividing a heterogeneous divisible good, an item that people may have different preferences over the item.
1:54.3	Well, let's talk about the traditional kind of cake-cutting situation where there are two people and you have the cake and what
	...

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