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Fair slicing of the pizza - using math

By Murray Bourne, 14 Dec 2009

Here's the situation. You order a pizza and the guy who cuts it for you has something in his eye and does a pretty bad job.

His first cut (BC) misses the center (A) and subsequent cuts are unevenly spaced, but at least he manages to get the cuts all passing through a single point (P).

pizza-slicing

The question is - if 2 people are eating the pizza and they take alternate pieces, will they eat the same amount or will one of them get more?

It turns out there is some interesting math behind this problem.

You can read some of the solutions in The perfect way to slice a pizza, by Stephen Ornes of The New Scientist (requires a subscription)

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