- Name
- Year (Sophomore, etc.)
- Major
- Where are you from?
- Something special about yourself.
- Paulos review of Lewis Carroll in Numberland
Illustration by Jonathon Rosen - A blog featuring Paulos review (and other materials)
- Another reviewer didn't care for it as much.
- Also not so favorable: "Of all the many versions of Lewis Carroll that scholars have furnished us with over the past few decades - we've had the paedophile, the secret lover, the drug-fiend and psychedelic voyager - this portrait of the artist as a celibate, solidly Anglican mathematical potterer is the dullest of the lot."
- How the cover came to be:
"While doing research for this book, I came across a medical condition called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome:"
also known as micropsia and macropsia, is a brain condition affecting the way objects are perceived by the mind. For example, an afflicted person may look at a larger object, like a basketball, and perceive it as if it were the size of a mouse. The condition manifests itself in connection with various other conditions, such as epilepsy, anxiety, and migraines. The disease is named after Lewis Carroll's novel due to the size changes Alice experiences. Carroll documented cases of classic migraines, so scholars have speculated that he may have experienced symptoms of macropsia or micropsia.
"Since the emphasis of this book was on Lewis Carroll's forgotten achievements in the world of mathematics, I thought it was a a good idea to refer to Alice in Wonderland on the cover, but drastically de-emphasize her scale to frame it in this book's context to numbers."
- Lewis Carroll (i.e. Charles Dodgson):
- How do you pronounce Charles Lutwidge Dodgson?
- Why study Lewis Carroll? What do you know of Lewis Carroll already?
- Carroll is still culturally relevant:
- Only one book was cited during President Votruba's convocation: Alice in Wonderland
- A recent newsletter I received in the last week cites the same.
- Anyone have favorite Carroll material? (My favorite is his poem Jabberwocky)
- We will try to answer these questions (from the preface):
- What mathematics did Dodgson do?
- How good a mathematician was he, and how influential was his work?
- Mathematical issues we will discuss (all treated by Dodgson) include:
- Bases
- Logic
- Venn Diagrams
- Syllogisms
- Zeno's Paradoxes
- Geometry
- Euclid
- Mobius bands
- Algebra (especially determinants)
- Divisibility
- Ciphers
- Voting schemes
- Tournament scheduling
- Games and Mathematical Recreations
- River-crossing
- The number 42
- Finding the day of the week
- Four color mapping problem
- An example: a Conversation with Lewis Carroll
- Another example: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter
- Another example: Was Carroll on Drugs ("White Rabbit")?
- Jefferson Airplane: White Rabbit (and Somebody to Love, from the Smothers Brothers show)
- White Rabbit lyrics (Jefferson Airplane)
- Psychodelic version
- Actual Woodstock tape recorded by my friend Ken Bielen (on a reel-to-reel recorder); Grace Slick at Woodstock.
- Visit the website, and the timeline of Lewis Carroll's life; check out some of the links I've already discovered.
- Propose one addition (or change!) to the timeline. Include text, and an image and link, if possible.
- Read the Introduction (through p. 19) -- if we've got a little time today, we'll get started on one or two.