The 2012 volume “The Best Writing on Mathematics,” edited by Cornell’s Mircea Pitici, helps the average person understand how math relates to daily life.

For the third straight year, Pitici, a graduate student in mathematics, has edited the volume, published by Princeton University Press, that collectively answers the question posed to many mathematicians: “What is it you do?”

The collection of essays touches on the history and philosophy of the field, math education and presentations of mathematical ideas. Among them: the intricacies of the distribution of prime numbers, and a lay-friendly explanation of octonions, which are a strange type of algebra in which “numbers” are 8-tuples of an ordinary number, according to the book’s foreword by mathematician David Mumford.

Other pieces divulge how math can be used in science and in life: in dancing, as a traveling salesman, in search of marriage and full-surround photography.

Pitici has taught math and writing seminars at Cornell, Ithaca College and Wells College. He received a teaching award from the Cornell Department of Mathematics in 2011, as well as the Buttrick-Crippen Scholarship awarded by the Knight Institute of Writing in the Disciplines in 2008.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Bucharest, Romania, and a master’s degree from Cornell, and is working toward a doctorate in mathematics education.