I read that book and the only part I found really interesting was the story about the one mathematician who had a bad tooth on his cog and a stiff link in his chain which, when they hit in a particular spot, would drop the chain. He would keep track in his head how many pedal revolutions it would take between instances where the bad tooth and stiff link would meet. Whenever it came around he would stop, get off and rotate the cranks one turn and get back on.

This was when I was a math major but yet to get into bikes.