# Alice’s illogical logic

Book two of Fantasy and Science Fiction was the pair of Alice novels: Alice and Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.  My essay and peer comments are here and again, I generally agree with the comments.  In the essay, I try to make an observation about the logic that Dodgson uses in the books.

Namely, I used a construction of logical implication, $p \implies q$, (I really like WordPress’ inline $\LaTeX$).  So, in the essay I compare the implication, false implies true (which is a true) statement, with the stories in Alice.  One of the students, who said he was a mathematician disagreed with that comment, and after review, I still think I was right 🙂

Taking the example from this great reference (pages 8-9), the statement, “If pigs can fly, then you can understand the Chebyshev bound,” is true.  Here we have $p \implies q$ where $p =$ “if pigs can fly” and $q =$ “then you can understand the Chebyshev bound.” Which is the case, $(F \implies T) = T$.

The converse, (as I mention in the essay), is not true, that is: “if you can understand the Chebyshev bound, then pigs can fly.” ($q \implies p \neq p \implies q$).

I’ll give the reviewer credit in that my argument is not strongly made and is confusing.  With a word limit of 320, it’s a challenge to capture a succinct idea, more so than one may think.  I’m still enjoying the class and as you can tell from the comments, peer reviewers put significant time into the remarks, which I greatly appreciate (even if I disagree).

Unfortunately, I missed my Dracula submission, but I’m nearly finished with Frankenstein and I have some ideas tossing around, so I should be back on track soon!