The Girl Who Played With Fire Mathematics

Black Swan

Recently read The Girl Who Played With Fire (2006) novel by Stieg Larsson. Fictional charter Lisbeth Salander was said to solve Fermat's Last Theorem (Pierre de Fermat 1637), suggesting that the solution was an elaboration of the obvious for a brilliant mathematical thinker. FLT had been an open problem for hundreds of years, had been listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as one of the most difficult mathematical problems, and had not been solved until Andrew Wiles completed a very complex proof in 1994.

It appears obvious that author Larsson was attempting to suggest that his heroine Lisbeth Salander was extraordinarily brilliant (e.g., almost autistic savant in mathematics and computers), making me wonder if other novel authors or screenplay writers of films had used such a device in the past, and in particular stressing mathematical brilliance?

Can you name any fictional novels or films that also used mathematics to suggest that their fictional hero or heroine was brilliant?

Yakuza

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: As far as I can remember, there is an appendix proving some mathematical conundrum or other that's used in the narrative proper. I can't remember it exactly, but I think this fits your criteria.

Good Will Hunting: Right at the start, Matt Damon's character solves a very difficult problem.

Kash

A few movies come to mind immediately:
Pi
Good Will Hunting (already mentioned above)
A Beautiful Mind
Breaking The Code
Proof

If you want the autistic savant side of things, then two more come to mind:
Rain Man
Cube

It appears obvious that author Larsson was attempting to suggest that his heroine Lisbeth Salander was extraordinarily brilliant (e.g., almost autistic savant in mathematics and computers), making me wonder if other novel authors or screenplay writers of films had used such a device in the past, and in particular stressing mathematical brilliance?

The autistic savant idea is further explored in the 4th book, written after Larsson's death.

paul0103

Yakuza wrote: »

Good Will Hunting: Right at the start, Matt Damon's character solves a very difficult problem.

Or maybe not so difficult...!

Yakuza

Fair enough, I don't remember the specifics.
I believe an ST:TNG episode refers to Fermat's last theorem as still being unsolved. Oops!

Black Swan

How about these films?

• Calculus of Love, 2011 (Goldbach conjecture)
• Equilibrium, 2002 (probability distribution for gun cutters)
• Real Genius, 1985 (power series and Bessel functions)
• Moneyball, 2011 (equations and statistics analyzing baseball players)
• The Last Enemy, 2008 (Poincare conjecture)
• Rites of Love and Math, 2009 (mathematical formulas are written onto skin)
• A Serious Man, 2009 (Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics)
• Bedazzled, 2000 (Fermat's theorem)
• Old School, 2003 (Harriot's method of solving cubics; Diophantine equations)

Michael Collins

Black Swan wrote: »

How about these films?

• Calculus of Love, 2011 (Goldbach conjecture)
• Equilibrium, 2002 (probability distribution for gun cutters)
• Real Genius, 1985 (power series and Bessel functions)
• Moneyball, 2011 (equations and statistics analyzing baseball players)
• The Last Enemy, 2008 (Poincare conjecture)
• Rites of Love and Math, 2009 (mathematical formulas are written onto skin)
• A Serious Man, 2009 (Uncertainty Principle in Quantum Mechanics)
• Bedazzled, 2000 (Fermat's theorem)
• Old School, 2003 (Harriot's method of solving cubics; Diophantine equations)

Wow, a fairly extensive list there! There's my movie list sorted for the next few weekends...

Another character that comes to mind, although he's most definitely not in the hero category, is Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes's arch nemesis.

Here are the words Sherlock uses to describe him in The Final Problem:

He is a man of good birth and excellent education, endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the binomial theorem which has had a European vogue. On the strength of it, he won the mathematical chair at one of our smaller universities, and had, to all appearances, a most brilliant career before him.

Another interesting fact here is that Moriarty is an Irish name (and Arthur Conan Doyle obviously had an Irish background himself).

Given this and some other all-too-convenient coincidences, Prof Des McHale from UCC, has theorised that George Boole, who was a Mathematics professor at Queen's College Cork (now UCC), was the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle's Prof Moriarty.

It makes sense, Queen's was a then a "small university", the Irish connection is clear, and in addition Arthur Conan Doyle would have been acquainted with George Boole's wife...It's elementary...

Black Swan

Michael Collins wrote: »

Another character that comes to mind, although he's most definitely not in the hero category, is Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes's arch nemesis: "endowed by nature with a phenomenal mathematical faculty. At the age of twenty-one he wrote a treatise upon the binomial theorem..."

Indeed, and a coincidence in that I am currently rereading The Collected Works of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. Granada films also has The Final Problem starring Jeremy Brett as Sherlock.

evolving_doors

Yakuza wrote: »

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: As far as I can remember, there is an appendix proving some mathematical conundrum or other that's used in the narrative proper. I can't remember it exactly, but I think this fits your criteria.

Good Will Hunting: Right at the start, Matt Damon's character solves a very difficult problem.

Was it the monty hall problem?

Fathom

Safe (2012). Girl w/extraordinary math talents.

silverharp

Black Swan wrote: »

How about these films?

• The Last Enemy, 2008 (Poincare conjecture)
  

I can see a TV series with the same name, is it the series with Cumberbatch?

Black Swan

silverharp wrote: »

I can see a TV series with the same name, is it the series with Cumberbatch?

The Last Enemy (2008 TV Mini-Series) Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Anamaria Marinca, Max Beesley. The theorem discussed is the Poincare conjecture.

Fathom

Black Swan wrote: »

The Last Enemy (2008 TV Mini-Series) Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Anamaria Marinca, Max Beesley. The theorem discussed is the Poincare conjecture.

Cumberbatch scene. Discusses equation. Two others spin off.

silverharp

Black Swan wrote: »

The Last Enemy (2008 TV Mini-Series) Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Anamaria Marinca, Max Beesley. The theorem discussed is the Poincare conjecture.

I started watching it, It looks good

Fathom

silverharp wrote: »

I started watching it, It looks good

Cumberbatch suspended disbelief.

Jan_de_Bakker

Yakuza wrote: »

Fair enough, I don't remember the specifics.
I believe an ST:TNG episode refers to Fermat's last theorem as still being unsolved. Oops!

Yep!
It was an episode called The Royale from season 2.

I think in an episode of DS9 or Voyager they mentioned Wiles proof to make up for it

Yakuza

Jan_de_Bakker wrote: »

Yep!
It was an episode called The Royale from season 2.

I think in an episode of DS9 or Voyager they mentioned Wiles proof to make up for it

Thanks for that. Most of the early TNG was fairly pedestrian, until the Borg became a real menace, so the first few seasons are a dim and distant memory for me - the awful clip show at the end of S2 which was (thankfully) the last appearance of Dr. Pulaski, I seem to remember fairly well .

Getting back to Maths in movies, does Ben Affleck's character in The Accountant solve any known problems? (I've not seen it yet, but the trailer suggests the normal movie trope of "well if he's on the autism spectrum, he *must* be a maths genius.")

silverharp

Yakuza wrote: »

Thanks for that. Most of the early TNG was fairly pedestrian, until the Borg became a real menace, so the first few seasons are a dim and distant memory for me - the awful clip show at the end of S2 which was (thankfully) the last appearance of Dr. Pulaski, I seem to remember fairly well .

Getting back to Maths in movies, does Ben Affleck's character in The Accountant solve any known problems? (I've not seen it yet, but the trailer suggests the normal movie trope of "well if he's on the autism spectrum, he *must* be a maths genius.")

and they have a drawing on walls scene apparently, not clichéd at all :pac:

Fathom

Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes. "Art of Deduction." Data collection. Lends well to math.

Black Swan

Fathom wrote: »

Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes. "Art of Deduction." Data collection. Lends well to math.

Granada films' Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett (now deceased) methinks was the best deductive thinker acted.

Black Swan

The rating system for new hit TV shows uses their form of math.

One eyed Jack

Numb3rs had an interesting premise:


Numbers (stylized NUMB3RS) is an American crime drama television series that ran on CBS from January 23, 2005, to March 12, 2010. The series was created by Nicolas Falacci and Cheryl Heuton, and follows FBI Special Agent Don Eppes (Rob Morrow) and his brother Charlie Eppes (David Krumholtz), a college mathematics professor and prodigy who helps Don solve crimes for the FBI. Brothers Ridley and Tony Scott produced Numbers; its production companies are the Scott brothers' Scott Free Productions, CBS Television Studios (originally Paramount Network Television, and later CBS Paramount Network Television).

The show focuses equally on the relationships among Don Eppes, his brother Charlie Eppes, and their father, Alan Eppes (Judd Hirsch), and on the brothers' efforts to fight crime, normally in Los Angeles. A typical episode begins with a crime, which is subsequently investigated by a team of FBI agents led by Don and mathematically modeled by Charlie, with the help of Larry Fleinhardt (Peter MacNicol) and Amita Ramanujan (Navi Rawat). The insights provided by Charlie's mathematics were always in some way crucial to solving the crime.

In May 2010, CBS announced that Numbers had been canceled after six seasons.