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Mathematics

The easy trick to evenly cut a pizza into 5, 7 or any number of slices

You ordered a pizza for your party, but the restaurant forgot to slice it – these mathematical tricks can help you cut it evenly, says Katie Steckles

By Katie Steckles

20 September 2023

the disc knife cuts. Homemade Pizza with Tomato and Basil

Malkovstock/iStockphoto/​Getty Images

FAIRNESS is important – in life, and in pizza. If you want to cut a pizza into equal-sized pieces, the difficulty will depend on how many people you need to share it between. Luckily, mathematics has some tricks to keep things equal.

For example, if the number of people you are sharing a pizza between is a power of two – one, two, four, eight, 16 – cutting the pizza into as many slices is easy. For one piece, obviously no cuts are needed. For each larger power of two, a cut across through the centre of the pizza – cutting…

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