Unequal

Chalkdust

17 March 2026

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Eugenia Cheng is a mathematician, educator, concert pianist and the author of Unequal: The Maths of When Things Do (And Don’t) Add Up (Waterstones).

Style

This book uses the notion of equality and the meaning of = as a launching point to look at equality in a wide range of context, including looking at approximation, when functions are equal, and category theory.

Control

As you’d expect if you’ve read any other Eugenia Cheng book, the book is very well written and a really enjoyable read.

Damage

If you’ve read a lot a maths books, you’ll be familiar with a lot of the ideas in this book, but the chapters on category theory really set this aside from other books. These present a detailed but understandable introduction to the reader of an area that’s less well covered in pop maths books.

Aggression

If you like reading about maths and want to start understanding why category theorists can’t stop telling everyone about category theory, then I’d strongly recommend this book to you.

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