North Words: Math could be inventive and enjoyable if you use cats to clarify it

Oct 17, 2025 —

Mitch TeichNorth Words: Math could be inventive and enjoyable if you use cats to clarify it

Dan Look is the first person to admit he’s not 100% sure who makes up the audience for his new book. It’s called “Math Cats,” and while there’s something in it for cat lovers or mathematicians, no one really knows the size of the overlap in the Venn Diagram of math-loving cat fanciers.  Or cat fancying-mathematicians.

Look is a math professor at St. Lawrence University, where he specializes in a field called complex dynamics. And he lives in Potsdam with his four cats – Spaghettios, Meow Meow, Mrs. Waffles, and Conan T. Cat, all of whom make cameos in the new book. And while his previous publications, such as “Sequence of complex radius values that yield capture Sierpiński curve Julia sets for n-circle inversion,” from Topology Proceedings, Vol. 64, might not speak to the average reader, “Math Cats” is written for all of us.

Through its short chapters and fun illustrations, Look uses cats as the entry point to explain the workings and the relevance of math concepts such as the Pythagorean Theorem and Fibonacci’s Sequence – and even make them more fun than we might remember from high school classes.

Look chatted with North Words host Mitch Teich and producer Ethan Shantie about the nine lives of his book, and about why there is more art and creativity to math than we might imagine.

Don’t forget to follow North Words so you never miss a conversation. Reach out to Mitch by writing to [email protected].