Review of "Mathematical Muffin Morsels - Nobody wants a small piece by William Gasarch, Erik Metz, Jacob Prinz, and Daniel Smolyak World Scientific, 2021 210 pages, Softcover, $59.99."

Abstract

You have 5 muffins and 3 (as usual) hungry students. They ask that you divide the muffins equitably between them. Do you cut every muffin into 3 parts, and give 5 separate pieces of size 1/3 to each student? Well no, because that's too easy, and more importantly no student wants any piece that's less than a third of a muffin. Can this be done? Indeed it can! It turns out you can guarantee that everyone gets a piece of size at least 5/12. Can everyone be guaranteed a bigger piece than that? Alas, the answer is no. That's the bad news. The good news is that one could write a book about it, and these guys wrote a great one.