Mathematics in Movies | Hacker News Reader

Mathematics in Movies

people.math.harvard.edu

106 pointssciencenut53 comments

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...

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...

Yeah, finding out if a number is prime or not can be unintuitive. But I doubt Grothendieck would have had trouble with anything divisible by 2 or 5...

My math is rusty enough to find it helpful to explicate that 2*5 is the complete factorization to primes of 10, and our customary arithmetic base for numbers written on the page is likewise 10.

I like the Einstein quote about the speed of light - some smartass asked him to recite it, and he’s basically like “I don’t memorize trivial information that’s easily looked up in books”

Could be totally apocryphal, but I like the sentiment.

>“I don’t memorize trivial information that’s easily looked up in books”

holy X

I get accused at having a poor memory A LOT!.

And I constantly tell people, I have a great memory - there are just things I dont choose to commit to memory.

I can tell you every single password I have typed into a machine. FblQ00Ho <--- ix.netcom.com 1996

But I cant tell you WHAT YOU TOLD ME you ate for lunch yesterday and suddenly I am a jerk.

"Why cant you recall what I told you yesterday??!?!?!?"

UH, because thats ephemeral information I dont need to hold in my head?

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

I think you are missing the point here. The only even prime is 2. The only prime ending with a 5 is 5.

The last digit of a prime bigger than 5 can only be 1, 3, 7 and 9.

I'm looking for some point?

also, you're focused on base 10. And that 1,3,7,9 is the basis of the how i remember them: 11,13,17,19 then 23 AND ALSO 101,103,107,109, and then 113. but why!?

I learned that all twin primes in base 4 either end in 1 xor 3. and I know that all primes congruent to 1 modulo 4 can factorized into a complex number with its conjugate (Gaussian primes). But I don't understand this, I only 'know it'

And then, I figured that all the twin primes in base 6 are always end in 5 then in 1. and that's it, this is supposed to be a question by the way

I recommend re-reading the OC and the replies.

what is the OC? whose replies??

I think I gotta somehow get a better understanding of Mersenne and Eisenstein primes, but I don't like jumping through 'bureaucratic'-academic hoops to get things explained to me. it's only numbers, I have other things to do

If number end in 2 or 5, is divisible by 2 or 5. So number ending in 2 or 5 cannot be prime. Math no hard to understand!

but this is only because 10 in ten in decimal system

but the numbers are not (only) how they're written down!

meh...

Everything you've written is gibberish in spanish, why did you do that?

cuz it happens to be the first spoken language I learned?

does this answer your question? if not, maybe this can help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdOtR2A5agc

What the original commenter dislikes is that a bunch of "brilliant" mathmaticians can't instantly recognize that any number ending with 2 or 5(except 2 and 5) can't be a prime.

I.e

999999999999995%5=0 999999999999992%2=0

Thus they are not prime numbers.

I am not a mathematician or an actor, but if I played one in Hollywood movies I could certainly answer your questions, confidently and wrong. Interesting tangent, just off-topic.

https://mathworld.wolfram.com/GaussianPrime.html

Not a down-voter of this, but author is missing the understanding that the set of primes is intrinsic to the integers and the definition of multiplication, and in not in any way dependent upon how integers are written on the page (or in the memory of a computer).

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.

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

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.

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

"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.

Nothing beats NCIS in abusing lack of knowledge around computer and software in the general public: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bwUdjeu4C6A (getting hacked through a power cable and fighting with 4 hands on a keyboard)

Create a GUI interface using visual basic to track an IP address https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU

I had never seen this show before and somehow stumbled across the 4 hands on a keyboard episode. It was awesome inspiring how terrible it was

Rumour is that the script writers tried to outdo themselves in who can slip the most ridiculous tech scenario into an episode.

Nowadays power cables are USB and definitely a threat vector.

NCIS was scifi ahead of its time.

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.

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

> "... 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

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

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/

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Was about to ask that! haha..

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

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/

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

NCIS with the "two hackers, one keyboard" bit is a good contender:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ

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/

This one is my favorite:

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

Disarming a nuclear bomb with excel

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....

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

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

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

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

Also covered by Mathologer : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04x4ZdLpN-0

I haven't seen that movie, but yeah, cringe violin aside, that's both a very realistic example of a simple Olympiad-style problem and an actually valid math proof!

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.

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