Problems with the Modernist Cuisine sous vide tables

[Anonymous Modernist 3337]

I posted this at egullet, and while a few people concurred with my argument, there was no response from the MC team, something which I feel would be both helpful to me and to them. Thus, I will repost here and hope to find some information:

So, I'm looking at the two charts, and Baldwin seems to suggest that which is intuitive to me. That is to say that cooking a meat in slab form should take longer than in cylinder form for each thickness of meat. On the other hand, Modernist seems to suggest that, for all but the largest sizes, cylinders should take more time. This makes no sense at all. In fact, Modernist estimates that a 15 cm diameter cylinder of 3 cm thickness would take 1:21 to cook to 55 degrees, while a slab of at least 5x length and width of the same thickness would take approx 50 minutes. But this makes no sense because the slab is at least 15x15 cm, by definition, and in that case you could inscribe the cylinder in the slab. But by doing this, by cutting off the meat and making it smaller, without changing thickness, you wouldincreasethe cooking time! That seems impossible. I am sure I am reading the whole thing incorrectly, but I would really appreciate an answer from somebody else who has puzzled over the same issue. Thanks!

Followed up by:

Tables 1 and 4. Table one assumes a diameter of 15 cm. Table two assumes of 15 cm but infinite diameters. It isn't operative for this question, though, since slab and fixed diameter both deal with increasing thicknesses.

So, here is the cylinder chart from Modernist which assumes a 15 cm diameter. Choosing a thickness of 3 cm, the diameter is 5x the thickness. Choosing a delta T of 55, we get 1hr 21m.

Here is the slab chart from modernist. It assumes a length and width at least 5x the thickness, so once again we choose 3 cm thickness, and we have a slab that is no smaller than 15x15x3, given the book description. Once again we choose a delta T of 55, and the time, according to the book is 49 min 45 sec.

Since we have chosen the smallest possible size for the slab (it must beat least5x length and width) the logic here should hold no for all possibilities. Now, since the cylinder from chart one can be inscribed in the slab from chart two, it is clearly smaller in some way. However, the time suggested is longer. In fact, the book suggests that by increasing the size of the cylinder to make it a slab, in other words by filling in the area left by the inscription, we can lower our cooking time by 26 minutes. This seems absurd, so either I am reading the charts incorrectly, or there is something very wrong with their model. Given that nathanm et al are clearly brighter than I am, I would assume the former, but Baldwin's chart, which you can see on his site, conforms to my theory.

I'd love an explanation from the Modernist people, or from anybody else, or a critique of my argument. Also, sorry if there is a copyright issue, I couldn't figure another way to do this.

Just to clarify visually, by my reading the modernist table says that B should take 26 minutes longer than A to cook!