A stick I found,
That weighed two pound.
I sawed it up one day.
In pieces eight,
Of equal weight.
How much did each piece weigh?
(Everyone says 1/4 pound, which is wrong.)

In Shylock's bargain for the flesh was found,
No mention of the blood that flowed around.
So when the stick was sawed in eight,
The sawdust lost diminished from the weight.

[–] MyDearWatson616@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's just pretentious. Oh your magic stick was exactly two pounds? The only right answer is "a little bit less than 1/4 pound"? Your stick weighted about 2 pounds, the pieces weigh about 1/4 pound. Get your wonderland shit out of here Lewis.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.one 7 points 1 year ago

He had another good one too... imma have to look it up because I don't have it memorized...

John gave his brother James a box:
About it there were many locks.
James woke and said it gave him pain;
So gave it back to John again.
The box was not with lid supplied
Yet caused two lids to open wide:
And all these locks had never a key
What kind of box, then, could it be?

As curly headed Jemmy was sleeping in bed,
His brother John gave him a blow on the head.
James opened his eyelids, and spying his brother,
Doubled his fists, and gave him another.
This kind of a box then is not so rare
The lids are the eyelids, the locks are the hair.
And any schoolboy can tell you to his cost
The key to the tangles is constantly lost.

[–] Klear@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Love the reasoning. Reminds me of how "1 + 1 equals 3 for suffuciently large valies of 1" is actually true when talking about physical objects, since there's always some rounding involved.

[–] Malgas@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

written by Lewis Carroll of all people

I mean, he was a mathematician and a poet. Is it really that surprising he wrote a poem about math?