Herd of Elephants
Stewart believes that mathematics are simply problems that interlink us humans between the world of maths and the real world. The solutions to maths may answer something that isn't related to maths but something just as real and important but physically unrelated. By using "flow" and "backflow" Stewart gives us the impression that the maths problems are ongoing in a never ending nature's cycle, like tidal waves.
Stewart addresses maths as an abstraction and he strongly believes that human mathematics is so complicated that it's hard to grasp the idea or even write it down on paper. He says that the structure is totally impenetrable therefore being too much info for us to take in and that our behaviour is even related to mathematics being applied to our constituent atoms.
I agree with Ian Stewart and that mathematic problems can be related to something else other than maths, as maths does relate to lots of daily activities we do. However, I disagree with Ian Stewart when he says mathematics can relate to our behaviour as I don't think it can be. I think our behaviour is dependant on our mind and heart to decide, not human mathematics.
Baking Bread
Ian Stewart compares Mathematics to Baking Bread as he mentions that Mathematics starts in the real world, therefore firstly he compares it to an activity in real world and secondly to express his thoughts more easily. Stewart brings attention to whether things in life are a discovery or invention and the different cases in Mathematics between discovery and invention. Stewart says people often oversee the most important things of Mathematics, 'significance, simplicity and elegance'. This could be related to baking as often known, to bake bread, the amounts of ingrediants used must be significant and exact for the perfect texture and taste. The more simple the ingredient is, usually the more delicious and easier the bread turns out to be. Lastly elegance could relate to the feeling and pride gotten from the entire process and of completing and successfully baking bread.
When Ian Stewart says, "Mathematics has an internal structure of logical deduction that allows it to grow in unexpected ways" I think not only does he apply this concept to Mathematics but he's relating this directly to baking bread as well. The difference between Mathematics and baking bread is that for Mathematics, we can generalize theories to make our calculations easier but for baking bread, this is impossible and it must be done the long, hard way and there's no easy way to it because if there was, the bread wouldn't turn out as good anyway.
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