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        riddles >> general problem-solving / chatting / whatever >> Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
        
(Message started by: SWF on Feb 7^th, 2005, 6:47pm)

Title: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by SWF on Feb 7^th, 2005, 6:47pm

There is a new television show called "Numb3rs" about a Cal Tech math genius who helps catch criminals by using mathematics to identify patterns in crimes. From what I have seen, the mathematician is often shown frantically scribbling equations on a blackboard speaking math mumbo jumbo. Using his equations he can take a map with dots marking locations of crimes and deterimine that the criminal probably lives near the centroid of the dots. I don't expect this show around for long, unless they get a Riddler type character to pose some decent challenges.

The network has decided to air the show when they figure math geeks will have free time to watch: Friday nights.

The 'creative' title "Numb3rs", reminds me of the movie "Se7en", and yesterday I saw a commercial for a movie or show called "Thir13en Ghosts".

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by Noke Lieu on Feb 7^th, 2005, 7:18pm

great. :(
Soon, on some TV network in Australia, a husky voice will be telling me about the "Hottest new crime drama from America will be slide ruling on our screens"
oh well. In theory, it could be done nicely. But a wise person once said (something like)
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by towr on Feb 8^th, 2005, 1:05am

I wonder how often the phrase "This doesn't add up" will fall..

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by rmsgrey on Feb 8^th, 2005, 11:22am

on 02/08/05 at 01:05:30, towr wrote:

I wonder how often the phrase "This doesn't add up" will fall..

I'm still bitter about the throwaway line in Pi, where the central character, supposedly a mathematician, says something like "I bet you tried listing all the 255 digit numbers and none of them worked" Hello? Basic numeracy? Ever tried counting to some relatively modest number like one million? Depending on how much time you spend counting per day, that's probably around a month. A billion would then be roughly one human lifetime. That's the nine digit numbers sorted. Suppose the world population is 10 billion - you still haven't got past 19 digits. Suppose humans have been around for ten thousand generations (at the current population level) - then with the entire human race throughout history working at it, you'd have got through maybe 23 digits... only a couple of hundred digits to go! To suggest that a secret society, working for a mere 6 thousand years or so would have even scratched the surface betrays a mind-boggling failure to grasp simple facts of life. It's as though Hollywood made a film where people constantly walked through walls (without using doors or windows) and passed it off as a historical drama.

OK, breathe... like I said, I'm still bitter about it.

Anyway, "Jonathan Creek" does the whole "nerd solves crimes" thing pretty well.

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by Grimbal on Feb 8^th, 2005, 4:10pm

A number like 255 would point at binary digits. But still...

By the way, any domain when it goes thru Hollywood takes its own life completely independently of what the same domain looks like in real life.
Cops routinely chase bad guys scrapping numerous cars, and they never comply to their superior's orders, the vilains always have completely twisted plans to kill the good guy, spies use funny gadgets and routinely disguise into other people using silicon masks, you can fire a gun for 15 minutes with a single round of ammunitions, radiations transform harmless animals into giant monsters, a magnetic storm can send you bak and forth in time, air ducts are well lit inside, modern building security systems can view the building in 3D and show the good guy as a green dot and the bad ones as red dots, safes are protected by laser beams instead of a solid grid, when you delete a file on one computer, the data will dissolve from any screen where it is viewed.

It is not only the mathematics.

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by Icarus on Feb 8^th, 2005, 4:57pm

You forgot: space battles are always noisy.

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by rmsgrey on Feb 8^th, 2005, 6:26pm

on 02/08/05 at 16:10:52, Grimbal wrote:

A number like 255 would point at binary digits.

Yeah, but that's an entirely separate rant and one about which I feel much less strongly - it probably ties into the traditional 255 character buffer limit or something, but mixing decimal and binary that way is a little... interesting.

If you watch "Worlds Wildest Most Dangerous Unbelievable Police Chases Fifty Seven - Two" (or whatever) you'll notice that genuine police footage also includes dangerous car chases, which wouldn't surprise me if they ended up trashing the odd vehicle.

It's not so much the mistake as the colossal size of it that bugs me - like someone setting off an atom bomb with the sole result being a flame they use to light their cigarette - fine in a cartoon situation, but hideously inappropriate in a suposedly realistic scenario.

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by SWF on Feb 8^th, 2005, 7:10pm

The mathematics in "Numb3ers" should be reasonably accurate, since I read they have is a Cal Tech professor as a consultant (I assume a math, not a drama, specialist). It is just that the concept does not seem like it would have many interesting ideas- like having a police show about the cops who do the paperwork.

If you want a movie with plenty of math silliness, see Jurassic Park.

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by towr on Feb 9^th, 2005, 12:33am

on 02/08/05 at 16:57:39, Icarus wrote:

You forgot: space battles are always noisy.

Well of course, after all the microphones are placed on the exploding ships.

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by BNC on Feb 9^th, 2005, 5:46am

on 02/08/05 at 16:57:39, Icarus wrote:

You forgot: space battles are always noisy.

Not to mention many other phenomina (http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/).

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by rmsgrey on Feb 9^th, 2005, 2:50pm

on 02/08/05 at 16:57:39, Icarus wrote:

You forgot: space battles are always noisy.

But that's because of the gravity-field effect weapons and drives creating "sound waves" in the fabric of space-time. I thought everyone knew that! (It's also how spacecraft do those banking turns...)

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by Noke Lieu on Feb 9^th, 2005, 6:39pm

C'mon, it's not like sound doesn't travel through space...
It's a relative thing. Just because there aren't enough particles in the wave-front to accurately detect them doesn't mean that the sound wave doesn't exist.
True, it doesn't pass through a vacuum, but space isn't a vacuum- it's just REALLY REALLY low density hydrogen (something like 3 atoms a m[sup3] ). OR is that another childhood-smarty-pants answer that I've held incorrectly all these years?

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by THUDandBLUNDER on Feb 10^th, 2005, 8:12am

Quote:

True, it doesn't pass through a vacuum, but space isn't a vacuum- it's just REALLY REALLY low density hydrogen (something like 3 atoms a m ).

Don't waves need a continuous media in order to pass on the molecular energy to the next molecule?

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by towr on Feb 10^th, 2005, 8:28am

What do you mean by continuous?
Because I wouldn't necessarily call gas continuous.

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by Sir Col on Feb 10^th, 2005, 10:18am

T&B is right. Sound waves are called mechanical waves because they require a medium to transfer their energy through; in contrast, electromagnetic waves do not require a medium. Sound waves are produced by one particle interacting with an adjacent particle, displacing it from its equilibrium position and causing adjacent particles to be displaced, and so on. In the context of "air", sound waves create a disturbance to the normal interaction of particles and, if directed towards the ear, this is perceived by the eardrum as noise. In very low density gas there is not likely to be sufficient energy transferred from one particle to another to allow sound to "travel".

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by Icarus on Feb 10^th, 2005, 3:36pm

No - this is the way sound normally travels, but if you have a thin plasma of particles traveling in the same direction, you could transmit sound by increasing and decreasing the density of the plasma. Noke Lieu is correct that the expanding matter wave from a space explosion can carry the "sound" of the explosion to other vehicles, though it will drop below measureable levels before it gets very far on a spatial scale. However, I really doubt that those beam weapons they always show will actually make the high-pitched whistling noise audible to all around that they are always depicted as making.

Title: Re: Crime Fighting Mathematician on TV
Post by SWF on Feb 10^th, 2005, 7:13pm

During space battles, the explosions do not bother me any more than than the music that is often playing. Is there music is space? Does hearing music during a space battle ruin it for you? Most movies in space have far more serious reality problems than the sound.

In movies there is no reason to assume the microphone is in the same spot as the camera, it is supposedly placed where the sound can be heard. When people talking in a car are shown from the outside, the movie usually allows us to hear the conversation. Is that frustrating because of the lack of realism?

Camera viewpoints are often taken from a location where the view should have been block by a wall. Would you prefer for the sake of realism that the wall block the view?