NPR: Author Lewis Carroll was also a math teacher in Oxford, England, and mathematicians say Alice in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass are full of algebraic lessons—such as why a raven is like a writing desk.
That's the riddle the Mad Hatter asks Alice. And, as Keith Devlin from Stanford University tells NPR's Jacki Lyden, "That particular scene—and lots of other scenes in Alice in Wonderland—were a reflection on the increasing abstraction that was going on in mathematics in the 19th century."
Related links
Algebra in Wonderland New York Times
Alice's adventures in algebra: Wonderland solved New Scientist
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