Everyone knows Alice in Wonderland, it's a whimsical and sometimes bizarre story that's become a children's classic nonetheless.
However, did you know it's not only a literary triumph but a mathematical one too?
The is according to a YouTuber known as Tibees. In their video, we learn that author Lewis Caroll is actually a pen name for the 19th century mathematician Charles Dodgson.
Originally, Dodgson told the story of Alice in Wonderland to Alice, the daughter of his university college dean.
His mathematical work was barely noticed despite writing a couple of books on the subject, and he was much more well known as a fiction writer.
Although, Dodgson still found a way to sneak some mathematics into the story, which may not be as easy to notice.
In the video, Tibees takes us through the book and points out the exact moment that Alice falls into the rabbit hole.
In the book, Alice says: “I’ll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: 4 times 5 is 12 and 4 times 6 is 13.
“And 4 times 7 is - oh dear! I shall never get to 20 at that rate!”
According to Martin Gardner, a mathematics and science writer who published annotations for the story, there’s a system to Alice’s sums.
In short, Alice is adding one every time she does a multiplication by four, and if you keep going this way, you’ll get to 4 x 12 which equals 19.
Tibees adds: “Children especially only know their multiplications up to 12, so she won’t be able to go any further and won’t be able to get to 20.
“This is a nonsense form of multiplication but it sets us up for the nonsense to come.”
Next, it’s time to meet Cheshire the cat, a recognisable part of the story that we all know and love.
There even seems to be some hidden maths in Cheshire’s famous grin, as Tibees explains in the video.
She said: “The grin might be referring to abstract or pure mathematics. It doesn’t necessarily have a cat to go along with it.
“They’re doing it just for the joy of mathematics itself and are living in the abstract world of equations.”
Another example is when Alice meets Mock the turtle, who may be introducing the idea of negative numbers when speaking to Alice.
They discuss the idea of ‘lessons’, and how they last ten hours on the first day and lessen each day.
Alice then asks what happens on the twelfth day, to which Mock quickly changes the subject.
Tibees explains: “This is something that also puzzled early mathematicians. In this case, what would happen on the twelfth day.
“Would students start to teach the teacher?”
Next, the famous mad hatter tea party has three characters present, but the fourth character ‘time’ isn’t present.
She explains further: “As a result, the party is forever stuck at tea time going round and round the table.
“Now it might be nothing, but the idea of three characters stuck going around and around and not making much sense without time has the same idea of quaternions.”
In fairly simple terms, a quaternion is an alternate way to describe orientation or rotations in 3D space using an ordered set of four numbers
The concept was introduced not too long before the story was written, in the video we learn that they consist of ‘three spatial dimensions.’
I, J and K are the imaginary dimensions and the fourth dimension is real, that is time.
Tibees explained: “Perhaps at the tea party, the guests were I, J and K, and without time, they don’t really make sense.”
There are plenty of other complex examples within the video which hint at hidden maths planted by Lewis Caroll himself.
It’s pretty impressive that he manages to write a classic book and incorporate some complicated mathematics in there too.
She concludes: “Given the author's background, it does make sense for there to be a little bit of mathematics.
“But maybe the nature of this story just lends itself to these interpretations.”
It seems like YouTube users were convinced with the analysis, as one commented: “ When Alice just falls down the rabbit hole and drinks from the bottle that shrinks her. She wonders if she'll just keep getting smaller or go out entirely.
“This seems like a reference to limits in calculus.”
Another added: “I never realised this! Such a unique way to explain maths to children.”
