Sometimes, all you have is a good title. Such was the challenge for Jeffrey Stopple as he planned his curriculum for the fall 2015 quarter at UC Santa Barbara. "The title just sort of popped into my head, and I don't know why," the professor of mathematics said of his course, 'The Mathematics of Alice in Wonderland.'

Stopple hadn't read the book since middle school, and had only vague recollections of the perplexing riddles and mysteries contained in the story. Though he didn't know what exactly he would teach, he felt compelled to turn that title into a fully realized course.

Now, 23 undergraduates in UCSB's College of Letters and Science Honors Program are enrolled in the seminar, which unpacks the mathematical concepts of paradox, self-reference and incompleteness, using a well-known text as a way to elucidate complicated technical ideas. It does not, however, delve that deeply into actual math. 'All you have to be willing to do is to think about puzzles and logic," said Stopple. No algebra required.