Math movies

Can't remember that film's name? Post the plot, and see if other users can help.
djross
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Math movies

Post by djross »

One of my brothers is a mathematician and the co-author of a book about how mathematics appears in movies (called Math Goes to the Movies). Since publication he's continued to try to track down every example he can find or that is brought to his attention, listing and discussing them in this database: https://www.qedcat.com/moviemath/.

But there are some movies he hasn't been able to track down, mentioned to him by friends or others. Some of the descriptions are pretty vague or minimal (I've pretty much left them as described by whoever it was who described them), but if anyone has any good ideas about what any of the following films could possibly be, then let me know:

    1. As best as I can remember, the moon is changing its orbit and drawing closer to and farther from earth (although it could be an asteroid or new planet). Speculation is that the impact will happen in a number of days. Then a scientist finds out that the decimal point in the equation was put in the wrong place, and earth is actually safe.

    2. A movie with Brando (or Bronson, some macho Hollywood actor) full of car chases and underworld mafia bosses, but at the end they ask the underworld boss "why did you put all of this information (names of informants, killer I guess) into a book?" (I think the point of the movie is the hero has to find the book and destroy it) and a secretary responds "he did a PhD in combinatorics and functional analysis".

    3. The plot seems like a cross between Pi and Primer. A brilliant researcher is trying to either translate something, or solve an equation, or break a code. They have rivals, the government gets involved, etc. Towards the end, things take a turn for fantasy. Through their research they determine that some sounds (discovered through their research) have magical properties. This is where it gets fuzzy, but I think that there are equations that lead to these sounds written either on whiteboards or notes, because someone “steals” the research. I believe the two rival researchers are a man and a woman and one of them might have curly brown hair. I want to say it was made sometime between 2005 and 2014.

    4. Some kind of a crime thriller set in the San Francisco bay area. One scene I recall was a man being questioned by his associates after he'd been abducted and taken in a van. He was unable to see where he was going (blindfolded?) but his questioners knew he'd been taken over one of the bay bridges, and made noises resembling what vehicles make as they go over the bridge roadway (one goes ka-tunk ka-tunk, another buzz-buzz-buzz, that kind of thing) and figured out which one (from Mapquest I guess either route 84 or 92). The abducted man also said he wound up at what sounded like a cocktail party (when the mystery was solved, that turned out to be a flock of quacking ducks!). The movie had little to do with mathematics. But one scene was a "mathematics lecture." That consisted of a long-haired man prancing up and down on the stage and uttering platitudes such as this one I remember "... and generating hypotheses of *Gaussian* significance." Nothing of any significance mathematically other than that! (I looked up Gauss in your book's index – not there.) This character was of minimal significance dramatically, but the principals were anxious not to miss the lecture, arrived late, stood at the back, and... end of my memory of this movie! But I have a hunch that the mathematics lecturer was "in league with the villains" but I remember nothing about the plot! And the scene with the lecture was no more than about thirty seconds, if that. It was definitely set in the south bay area with a car trip from the peninsula eastwards that ended with the sighting of a flock of ducks. As best as I can recall it was in the 80s or 90s.

    5. Movie at asylum? 70’s or 80s. Guy's random numbers turn out to be prime.

vmilner
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Re: Math movies

Post by vmilner »

Not one you're asking about but

"Nowhere to run" (1978) is a good TV movie about a Blackjack system that's not on your list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowhere_to_Run_(1978_film)

djross
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Re: Math movies

Post by djross »

vmilner wrote:Not one you're asking about but

"Nowhere to run" (1978) is a good TV movie about a Blackjack system that's not on your list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowhere_to_Run_(1978_film)


Thanks!

MacSwell
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Re: Math movies

Post by MacSwell »

The first one sounds like Melancholia

iconogassed
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Re: Math movies

Post by iconogassed »

Not exactly high-level math, but this adaptation of Lem's "Trurl's Machine" accurately depicts what happens in my brain when I try to comprehend high-level math



Here are some awkward English subs (the main action is essentially nonverbal):

[spoiler]1
00:00:08,370 --> 00:00:12,229
In a parallel universe, once upon a time, two designers,

2
00:00:12,370 --> 00:00:15,229
such peerless masters in cosmogony

3
00:00:15,370 --> 00:00:20,229
there were things which they could not create.

4
00:00:20,370 --> 00:00:23,229
Both of these designers, Trurl and Klapaucius,

5
00:00:23,370 --> 00:00:28,229
constantly labored over way in which you can learn

6
00:00:28,370 --> 00:00:35,229
What else can be constructed, except those signs that they were coming to a head.

7
00:00:58,370 --> 00:01:02,229
For explanation raskazam Stanislaw Lem from "The Tales of the Robots"

8
00:01:02,370 --> 00:01:06,229
TRURL'S MACHINE

9
00:08:03,370 --> 00:08:05,229
It was certainly a stupid machine,

10
00:08:05,370 --> 00:08:09,229
but not the normal, medium folly, on the contrary,

11
00:08:09,370 --> 00:08:12,229
it was the stupidest intelligent machine in the world,

12
00:08:12,370 --> 00:08:14,229
and that's something.

13
00:08:14,370 --> 00:08:15,229
And not only was it stupid,

14
00:08:15,370 --> 00:08:19,229
and stubborn, like a sheep, that is, had the character.

15
00:08:19,370 --> 00:08:25,229
However, these idiots, they are usually incredibly stubborn ...[/spoiler]

Also of possible interest...I only came across the story of Bill Benter this week, but immediately thought of Leonard Michaels' Nachman stories, about a brilliant mathematician, in particular "Nachman at the Races", in which the protagonist anticipates Benter in discovering a "perfect formula" for betting on horse races, and "The Penultimate Conjecture", in which he reluctantly realizes a colleague has made a blunder in a proof. The math in the stories is mainly a device, but I would like to think/would be curious whether the real mccoys would get a kick out of them

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