Mathematical Fairy Tales

Randall Munroe, the creator of the popular webcomic xkcd has this comic about fairy tales and math mixing together. This is quite an old webcomic, number 872. However, when I looked to see if anyone had written a version of the fairy tale, I didn't find any. Of course, I didn't look that hard; I was already thinking of my own version of the stories. Here are some of my attempts.

I would be very curious to see how someone can significantly introduce eigenvectors into Cinderella. Or manage to write a story about Goldilocks and the three bear that relates to Newton's method and for it to be a significant departure from the original story. In general, I hope that some of these mathematized fairy tales can be educational in introducing mathematical concepts. For example, the tortoise and the hare is a good candidate to introduce ideas from calculus. But I was beat to that punch by Zeno of Elea by some 2,400 years.