Strogatz, the NYT, and Taxicab Geometry
I’m excited to share a new piece I’ve written for the New York Times Learning Network that turns mathematician Steven Strogatz’s excellent “Math, Revealed” essay on Taxicab geometry into a resource for teaching and learning.
If you’ve ever wondered how pi could be equal to 4, or what a perpendicular bisector looks like in the Manhattan metric, take a look! The article includes discussion prompts, creative challenges, and classroom suggestions from algebra to calculus. And it even includes some suggestions from Strogatz himself! The piece is freely available here, and also includes free access to the original essay.
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1 Comment
.mau. · September 17, 2025 at 1:16 pm
the fact that pi=4 in taxicab geometry is really fascinating! I wrote about it in my book “Chiamatemi pi greco” (since it is written in Italian and few if any readers of your blog speak Italian, I hope it is not considered as spam…) But in general conics are quite interesting in taxicab geometry, because you have to think how to define it in a sensitive way.