Pringles: The Edible Hyperbolic Paraboloid

My wife forwarded an email with a link to a CNN article and subject line, “Your husband will love this.” Uh-oh. Even my closest friends cannot correctly predict what I will and will not love, so how would a colleague of my wife — who only knows me from an introduction at a professional reception — be able to make such a prediction?

But the article did not disappoint. The author wrote about the mathematically satisfying shape of Pringles^®, and she quoted her husband thus:

They [Lays Stax] set themselves up as a Pringles competitor, but it’s an entirely different curvature!

I have never met the author, but her last name was familiar. As luck would have it, her math professor husband and I taught together at a gifted camp for several summers. Small world, eh?

My favorite line of the article was from the last paragraph.

Flavor is subjective. Math is irrefutable.

Fact.

What I enjoyed most about this occurrence was the intersection of several math topics. The article discusses parabolic cylinders and hyperbolic paraboloids, which are topics in multivariable calculus; a colleague of my wife forwarded a link about an article written by the wife of a former colleague, which demonstrates social network theory; and, a colleague of my wife is not equivalent to the wife of my colleague, which shows non‑commutativity.

My two cents? Pringles^® rule.

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