Mathematics in Movies

[bambax]

In Cube (1997) the characters are trapped in a labyrinth of sorts made of boxes (cubes) that they can escape by solving math riddles.

They're all supposed to be math geniuses, but very early on in the movie they take forever to decide if 645 or 372 are prime numbers... It kind of killed the suspension of disbelief for me right there...

[ak_111]

The authors probably didn't meant it, but this is surprisingly realistic of math geniuses (see stories of Grothendieck Prime and Weyl in the following thread)

https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6358/story-of-grothe...

[c22]

Were they all supposed to be math geniuses? It's been a long time since I watched it but I recall just one math genius then a doctor, a police officer, an architect, a convict, and an autistic savant (who may have also been a math genius but was non-verbal?). I don't remember it being implied that the other characters were particularly mathematical.

[BSEdlMMldESB]

except for the autistic crazy who just somehow knows

but I haven't seen that movie in many years, so I don't remember what he knows

but the actual test was 9 digits? (if i recall well)

I 'memorized' the first 31 primes! why? I'm not sure; but I know how I did it, I don't know what it means tho

[thelastgallon]

Big Bang Theory seems to have done this right.

David Saltzberg, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, checked scripts and provided dialogue, mathematics equations, and diagrams used as props.[4] According to executive producer/cocreator Bill Prady, "We're working on giving Sheldon an actual problem that he's going to be working on throughout the [first] season so there's actual progress to the boards ... We worked hard to get all the science right."[5] Saltzberg, who has a Ph.D. in physics, served as the science consultant for the show for six seasons and attended every taping.[23] He saw early versions of scripts that needed scientific information added to them, and he also pointed out where the writers, despite their knowledge of science, had made a mistake. He was usually not needed during a taping unless a lot of science, and especially the whiteboard, was involved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bang_Theory

[selykg]

This show gets a lot of negativity thrown at it, but damn do I miss this show. Something about it, even in the later seasons which were definitely adjusted for a wider audience it seems, were still very enjoyable for me.

[fosterfriends]

I used to laugh a the "let's enhance" (and still do), but watching generative image models get better, I wonder if fiction will become a reality, abet with lots of hallucinations. At least the enhanced reflections of perpetrators' faces will have a lovely mid-journey art style.

classic compilation of "Let's enhance" - https://youtu.be/LhF_56SxrGk

[gilleain]

"The eigenvalue is off" was a nice one.

Nothing will beat NCIS though - for example where they 'enhanced' a picture where a reflection in an eyeball.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

In Enemy of the State, one of the computer techs does an "enhance", and when they notice a bulge in a carrier bag he points out that it could just be an artifact of the enhancement rather than representing something real in the photo.

Some studio hired a non-idiot consultant for once.

[dspillett]

> "... that can bitmap"

!!

I knew¹ people who won't touch SciFi or anything that they think remotely whiffed of it, parrot because it was "unrealistic", yet lapped up NCIS and similar. Always amused me.

--

[1] Not so much now, science fiction seems to be more acceptable to a wider audience

[FeteCommuniste]

Love that one. My favorite is "Enhance the reflection in her eye." :-D

[dvh]

Community did the spoof of the good will hunting: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vSkzHJ-6FjU

[motohagiography]

Bit of trivia about Good Will Hunting is that the professor's jealous assistant is played by playwright and mathematician John Mighton, who has had a comment apocryphally attributed to him afterward that the original script was an action flick, and the final version was not-un-influenced by more technical insight that may or may not have involved him. (I don't want to put words in his mouth, but he was the actual mathematician on set) He went on to create a program called Jump Math, which accelerates numeracy in kids. https://jumpmath.org/us/about/john-mighton/

[taeric]

I was hoping https://theinfosphere.org/Futurama_theorem would be mentioned. Only movies counted, I guess? :D

[lukebrichey]

Had the privilege of Oliver Knill teaching me Multivariable Calculus. It wasn’t my favorite course, but his excitement when he started to talk about math was truly inspiring.

[javier_e06]

In "No Country for Old Men" When Anton finds you and you don't want to die he leaves you with an option: "I'll kill you now or you flip a coin and call it in the air, if you win I'll let you go". Is that really an option? Mathematical Models. Game Theory.

[m1kal]

In "My Little Pony the movie" Twilight Sparkle explains to Celestia and Luna how she wants the Sun and the Moon organized. She uses mathematical formula written on a blackboard. I can't recall what the formula was, probably wavelength calculation.

[quadral]

Is there a similar website for the "hacking" scenes?

[mellosouls]

Not sure anything can beat the famous CSI hacking the killers IP address using a VB GUI Interface scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU

[jonhohle]

I remember reading nice write ups about the SSH exploit used in Matrix Reloaded when it was released [0], [1].

0 - https://www.theregister.com/2003/05/16/matrix_sequel_has_hac... 1 - https://nmap.org/movies/

[tinsmith]

I did enjoy r/itsaunixsystem on Reddit for many years. A website that collects and maybe analyzes these scenes would be fun.

https://www.reddit.com/r/itsaunixsystem/

[power]

You may enjoy https://behind-the-screens.tv/

[water-data-dude]

This one is my favorite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkkmtkAO4p0

Disarming a nuclear bomb with excel

[jp0d]

Was about to ask that! haha..

[colinwilyb]

Nice clips, but I really want a math-knowledgeable person to examine and talk about the equations!

I love math, just can't seem to grasp it. Going on 40 years now....

[l__l]

Cool! I love collections like this :) A 10-min format and sort (alphabetical or chronological) would make this so much more scanable though

[push-to-prod]

I wonder how many of these have realistic math in them, I suspect it'd be considerably shorter list.

[Syzygies]

Yep, but beware of anyone who makes criticism their identity. That's a mindset that predetermines perception.

As math consultant to "A Beautiful Mind" I waited six hours so Russell Crowe could ask me where to look when he declared that Jennifer Connelly's solution to the blackboard problem was wrong. He cared about details. Then Jennifer asked me if I was making her look like a yahoo. I explained that in testing a professor had given her answer.

Various people get wigged out that the young student in the late library scene was spouting math that was well known. Um, ever been a student? I'd made this same observation to Barry Mazur in the hallway as a student, and he just grinned, "It's all connected!" Meanwhile, no one addressed my partial proof of the Riemann Hypothesis that Nash had left on a board.

In the Harvard Lecture Hall scene, Nash compared space-time to the quaternions. Um, he was about to be institutionalized? I knew I had to use this line after the look Brian Greene gave me when I tried it on him. Still, it bothers critics.

Ron Howard found it helpful to think of the math as an actor. That was great direction for me.

[raspyberr]

I've always considered this to be a pretty accurate scene: https://youtu.be/watch?v=mYAahN1G8Y8

[matt-attack]

Basically “what English majors’ idea if math is”.