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Mathematics Goes to the Movies
by Burkard Polster and Marty Ross
Must-See Math Movies (criteria: fun, full of math, enjoyed watching)
This page complements the book we are writing with the same title. Below is a list of titles and short descriptions of over 500 movies and TV episodes that contain mathematics. Over time, more titles will be added. And, more titles will be hyperlinked to individual pages containing more comprehensive detail; included are the approximate times where the dialogue occurs (though these times may differ in other releases).
What's the point? About ten years ago, we started collecting movies containing mathematical dialogues and images. Today we own a mathematical movie library of more than 400 movies on DVD, CD, VHS, and 16mm. Over the years, we have found that it is not only professional mathematicians who find the fun in mathematical movie action. In fact, just about everybody loves Meg Ryan explaining Zeno's paradox in I.Q., Danny Kaye singing about Pythagoras's Theorem in Merry Andrew, Abbot and Costello explaining why 13 times 7 equals 28 in In the Navy, and so on. This is certainly true for our university students, who greatly appreciate light movie-mathematical supplements to their usual mathematical fare.
The material on this page originated in our attempt to get a sense of what "is there". We've been systematically excerpting and commenting on the relevant dialogues, screen shots, director's comments on DVDs, published interviews, and so on. In the end, we found much more material than we could possibly include in our planned book. Also, not all of the material was sufficiently interesting or fun to qualify for inclusion. Hence, this webpage. Nevertheless, we felt that we should try to be as comprehensive as possible in our coverage of mathematics in the movies. We also provide a list of episodes from TV series, including a few music videos, with mathematical content. Here, we've made no attempt to be comprehensive, but some appearances were just too rich or too funny to ignore.
Other websites. There are a number of other websites dedicated to mathematics in the movies that you may also want to check out. Most importantly, there is Arnold G. Reinhold's The Math in the Movies site, Alex Kasman's Mathematical Fiction Homepage and Oliver Knill's collection of mathematical movie clips (you might want to be quick!!). Also make sure to check out simpsonmath.com, a comprehensive website dedicated to mathematics in The Simpsons. Everything about math in Futurama can be found in the math section of the amazing site La indoblable pagina de Bender bending Rodriguez. Also check out some of the websites that talk about the mathematics in the various episodes of the TV series Numb3rs such as Wolfram's Numb3rs website. We recommend that you consult the International Movie Database (IMDB) for general information about these and other movies. Links are included for each movie listed below, and the titles on the individual movie pages are also linked to IMDB.
Contact. If you know of any mathematical movie not on our list, if you spot a mistake, or if you would like to get in touch with us about anything else, please drop us a line:
(The logo for this page is taken from the movie A Beautiful Mind, where it appears on the rear window of the car of the newly-wed Alicia and John. The idea for this great way of expressing mathematically the idea of two people getting closer over time is due to Dave Bayer, the math consultant of A Beautiful Mind.)
Must-See Math Movies (criteria: fun, full of math, enjoyed watching)
The Bank (2001) IMDB A math prodigy takes revenge on a bank. Tons of math.
A Beautiful Mind (2001) IMDB A movie about the brilliant mathematician John Nash, who won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in game theory.
Breaking the Code (1996) (TV) IMDB A great movie about the mathematician and logician Alan Turing, played by Derek Jacobi.
Cube (1997) IMDB Six people wake up in a deadly maze, full of mathematical clues.
Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) IMDB A new bunch of victims in a new deadly maze, this time supposedly a hollow hypercube.
Donald in Mathmagicland (1959) IMDB This movie is for mathematics what Disney's Fantasia is for classical music.
Eustice Solves a Problem (2004) A terrific short film, set around a children's quiz program in 1958.
Fermat's Last Tango (2001) IMDB Terrific musical about Fermat's last theorem, featuring Andrew Wiles, Pythagoras, Gauss, Euclid, Newton, and a deliciously vain Pierre de Fermat.
Fermat's Room (La Habitación de Fermat) (2007) IMDB Four mathematicians are trapped in a shrinking room that can only be stopped from shrinking by solving a number of puzzles. The Goldbach conjecture plays a major role.
Flatland: The Movie (2007) IMDB State of the art animated adaptation of Edwin Abbot's classic Flatland.
Good Will Hunting (1997) IMDB Movie about a math prodigy with tons of mathematics.
In the Navy (1941) IMDB Just one scene: the famous and hilarious routine in which Costello proves 7x13=28 in three different ways. For other versions, by Abbott and Costello and others, see this, this, this, this and this.
It's My Turn (1980) IMDB Light romantic movie about a female mathematician. Famous among mathematicians because the full proof of the Snake Lemma is given in the first scene. Tons of mathematics and mathspotting on blackboards.
Lambada (1990) IMDB Stand and Deliver with dirty dancing. Blade is a supercool math teacher who inspires his students. Most memorable cheesy scene: Blade demonstrates the usefulness of math by making a near impossible three-cushion (pool) shot using "the rectangular coordinate system" and a protractor.
The Mirror has Two Faces (1996) IMDB A romantic comedy about a math professor who is dragged out of his shell. Tons of math.
Mozart and the Whale (2005) IMDB A charming romantic movie about two people with Asperger's syndrome, one with strong mathematical abilities. Some touching and funny scenes about mathematical literalism and factoring license plates.
The Oxford Murders (2008) IMDB A fun murder mystery with two mathematicians (John Hurt and Elijah Wood) taking on the role of detectives. One scene has a professor proving "Bormat's Last Theorem".
Pi (1998) IMDB The mathematical prodigy Max is looking for pattern in nature and in the stock market. Tons of math.
The Professor and his Beloved Equation (Hakase no Aishita Sûshiki) (2006) IMDB Lovely movie about a mathematics professor who only remembers things for a short time. He likes perfect and amicable numbers and his favorite equation is Euler's identity: eiπ+1 = 0.
Proof (2005) IMDB Excellent adaptation of David Auburn's excellent play. Gwyneth Paltrow is a troubled mathematician, coming to terms with the death of her troubled mathematician father.
The Simpsons: Homer3 (1995) (TV, and 3D IMAX) IMDB Homer stumbles into a 3D world, filled to the brim with mathematical bits and pieces.
Solid Geometry (2002) (TV) IMDB A man reads his grandfather's work on "a plane without a surface", and applies it to make his unwanted girlfriend disappear.
Stand and Deliver (1988) IMDB Great movie about the legendary math teacher Jaime Escalante, motivating his students in a poor school in East Los Angeles.
The Twilight Zone: I of Newton (1985) IMDB "I'd sell my soul to get this right", exclaims a frustrated mathematician. The devil promptly appears to accept the trade.
Here is our complete list of over 400 movies. To make browsing easier, we have included a star rating for mathness, in either fun or quality or quantity: from ***** for the movies above, down to * for minimal math content.
12 Angry Men (1957) IMDB * Probability is used by a jury member to cast doubt on the accused's guilt.
12 to the Moon (1960) IMDB ** A mathematician on a spaceflight performs some implausible calculations.
1984 (1984) IMDB ** A man gets brainwashed into believing that 2+2=5. Iconic scene.
2010 (1984) IMDB * A monolith left by aliens has proportions 1:4:9.
21 (1960) IMDB *** Kevin Spacey is a math professor who organizes some of his students into a team of blackjack players. The Monty Hall puzzle has a large scene. Newton's method and Fibonacci numbers make brief appearances, and there are some nice blackboards with Cauchy sequences and continued fractions.
21 Grams (2003) IMDB ** The main character is a mathematician, who engages in "math is beautiful" philosophizing.
23 (1998) IMDB ** The original German movie, with a guy obsessing on appearances of the number 23: so, 11 + 12 = 23, and so on. The number 5 is also important, since 2+3=5.
The 39 Steps (1935) IMDB ** A performing mnemonist memorizes secret mathematical plans.
About a Boy (2002) IMDB * Includes a classroom scene in which a teacher talks about the significance of the decimal point.
The Absent-Minded Professor (1961) IMDB * We see the absent-minded professor (not a mathematician) in front of blackboards filled with formulas.
Aces (2006) IMDB ** Math majors, one with the alias "Theorem Girl", spend the summer playing poker. Their probability isn't quite right.
The Adding Machine (1969) IMDB * A counting-obsessed accountant named Zero commits a murder.
A-Ducking They Did Go (1939) IMDB ** The three stooges have a funny 1-liner on percentages.
After Midnight (Dopo Mezzanotte) (2004) IMDB **** The lead characters win the lottery by playing the first few Fibonacci numbers. They spout the usual lines about Fibonacci numbers in nature.
Alien Hunter (2003) IMDB *** The main character is an expert cryptanalyst. Very funny blooper involving the chances of something being "99 to the infinite ...", but not 100.
All In (2006) IMDB * A silly poker movie, with a few nonsensical percentages thrown in to make it sound plausible.
The Amateur (1981) IMDB * A spy is writing a book on Elizabethan codes and ciphers.
The American President (1995) IMDB ** One of the President's aides is a mathematician.
Amy & Isabelle (2001) (TV) IMDB *** A teacher talks of the beauty and usefulness of math. Extended classroom scene on right triangles, and an extended scene on Millay's famous poem: "Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare".
Angels & Demons (2009) IMDB ** Ambigrams are a theme in the movie, and there's a bit of number mysticism centred on 503.
Annapolis (2006) IMDB ** Navy recruits learn calculus, and give strange map coordinates: "65 degrees 85 minutes North".
Antonia's Line (1995) IMDB *** A movie about a wunderkind who becomes a mathematician. Wunderkind calculations, and a homological algebra lecture with commuting diagrams on blackboards.
Apocalypse Now (1979) IMDB * Dennis Hopper (as the relatively sane one!) tries to explain Marlon Brando to Michael Sheen: "This is dialectics. It's very simple dialectics, one through nine. No maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel in space, you can't go out into space, you know, without like you know, uh, with fractions. What are you gonna land on? 1/4, 3/8?"
Are You With It (1948) IMDB **** Donald O'Connor plays Milton Haskins, an actuary who misplaces a decimal point, and despondently quits to become a carny. Some very funny bits, with Milton doing instantaneous calculations with a slide rule. He determines when a poker machine will pay off as "a simple problem in arithmetical progressions ...on the second winning play a combination had been reached, equal to the square root of 322 million raised to the 11th power ... one more play should produce the Johnpot". Milton also explains that "dancing is merely a question of applied mathematics": he demonstrates, with 3 times 2 times 2, leading to a terrific tapdancing routine.
The Arrival (1996) IMDB *** Very funny blooper involving an incorrect way to add percentages.
Atama-yama (2002) IMDB ** Weird cartoon, culminating with a man having his smaller self sitting on his head, in an infinite descending sequence.
Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987) IMDB *** A teacher discusses the fact that in a quadrilateral circumscribed around a circle, the sum of two opposite sides is equal to the sum of two remaining sides.
The Avengers (1998) IMDB ** Uma Thurman runs down an Escherlike staircase and into a Pacmanlike maze of rooms.
The Aviator (2004) IMDB *** Howard Hughes passes off a meteorologist as a mathematician to a censorship board objecting to Hughes's movie. The "mathematician" uses calipers to prove that Jane Russel's décolleté is consistent with that of other movie stars.
Bachelor of Hearts (1958) IMDB *** A sweet comedy about a German student who visits Oxford to study mathematics, and finds beer and romance. He tries to become first wrangler (which is difficult, given he's not at Cambridge). There's some math around the edges.
Back to the Future Part III (1990) IMDB ** The heroes "think four-dimensionally" in order to drive a locomotive towards a bridge that hasn't been built yet.
Ball of Fire (1990) IMDB **** Fun movie about a team of stuffy academics being charmed by Barbara Stanwyck. When Isaac Newton is raised, she refers to herself as just another apple. The mathematician tries to find the common denominator of her syncopated dance moves, and argues from relativity that the signpost ran into their car. The academics argue over whether the correct grammar is "two and two is five", or "two and two are five". They also use Archimede's mirrors idea to thwart the bad guys.
The Bank (2001) IMDB ***** A math prodigy takes revenge on a bank. Tons of math.
Baraka X−77 (1966) IMDB * The cracking of Professor Sartan's code, and mention of a book "Introduction to the theory of tensor equations".
Batman (1966) IMDB *** "Penguin, Joker, Riddler, and Cat Woman, too. The sum of the angles of that rectangle is too monstrous to contemplate!"
Battlefield Earth (2000) IMDB *** The hero is put into a learning machine and learns about math: Equilateral triangles, quadratic formula, etc.
Battle of the Worlds (Il Pianeta Degli Uomini Spenti) (1961) IMDB *** Crazy mathematician does calculus on flowerpots. Pythagoras's harmony of the spheres gets a mention.
A Beautiful Mind (2001) IMDB ***** An excellent movie about the brilliant mathematician John Nash, who won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in game theory.
Beautiful Ohio (2006) IMDB **** Excellent, dark movie about a math prodigy and his family, seen through the eyes of his less brilliant brother. "Square root of 56 389". "237 point, about 46". "That truly is extraodinary. Where do you get that from?" "From the back of the sock drawer". Maths scattered throughout, including the famous weighing puzzle of 12 coins containing a counterfeit.
Bedazzled (1967) IMDB *** Peter Cook, as the devil, explains to Dudley Moore that everything he's ever said to him is a lie. A very funny display of the Liar's Paradox.
Bedazzled (2000) IMDB *** Elizabeth Hurley as a devil-teacher, denouncing Fermat's last theorem as useless.
The Beginning or the End (1957) IMDB * Movie about the making of the atom bomb. One scene pans across academics working on supposedly relevant mathematics: mostly long division of polynomials.
Believers (2007) (V) IMDB *** A movie about a loony cult, whose leader think a PDE and killing themselves will save them from the end of the world. The loons turn out to be correct.
The Belly of an Architect (1987) IMDB * Nice scene in which the main character of the movie discusses the portrait of Isaac Newton on an old British 1 pound note.
The Best of Youth (La Meglio Gioventù) (2003) IMDB ** Giulia explains that she started studying maths because she wanted to solve the problem of the jealous husbands: three couples want to cross the river in a boat which only holds two people, and each jealous husband refuses to have his wife left with other men. Giulia's audience doesn't get very far with the solution.
Better Off Dead (1985) IMDB *** A comedy in which a math teacher doing really boring and nonsensical math is worshipped by his students.
Bianca (1984) IMDB **** A murderous math teacher. Classroom scenes feature calculus and Dürer's magic square.
Big (1988) IMDB ** Tom Hanks helping a kid with his algebra homework.
Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey (1991) IMDB *** Bill and Ted (Keanu Reeves) run into Colonel Oats, who makes them do infinity push-ups. They contemplate that it might be possible if they're allowed to do them girly style.
Bingo (1991) IMDB *** Bingo is a very smart dog: he can do square roots.
Black Narcissus (1947) IMDB * Nuns teaching in the Himalayas, with a little algebra in one scene.
Blaise Pascal (1972) (TV) IMDB ** Lots of philosophy and essentially no math in Roberto Rossellini's biopic. The mathematician Marin Mersenne makes a brief appearance.
Bloodfist VIII: Trained to Kill (1996) IMDB ** The main character is an ex-spy and martial art expert posing as a math teacher.
The Blue Angel (Der Blaue Engel) (1930) IMDB * In one scene, the blackboard behind Professor Unrat contains some trigonometry.
Botchan (1980) * Animated version of this traditional Japanese story about a teacher. Some geometry in a couple classroom scenes.
Box of Moon Light (1996) IMDB ** Gigantic flash cards for learning the times tables keep reappearing. They don't seem to do a lot of good.
Brain Dead (1987) IMDB *** An insane mathematician is in possession of a valuable formula. Great blackboard, where a ton of calculations = BOOM!
Brave Archer 3 (Se Diu Ying Hung Juen Saam Jaap) (1981) IMDB *** This movie features a 10x10 magic square. The properties of magic squares are explained using the usual 3x3 magic square. And a problem is posed: ``A number that divided by 3 leaves 2, divided by 5 leaves 3 and divided by 7 leaves 2. What is the number?''
Breaking the Code (1996) (TV) IMDB ***** A great movie about the mathematician and logician Alan Turing. Fibonacci numbers make a notable appearance.
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) IMDB ** "If you make one [parachute] jump you've got 50% chance of injury. If you make two, 80%, and three you are bound to catch a packet. ... go ahead and jump and hope for the best". Response from the jumper: "With or without parachute?"
Brutal (2007) IMDB **** A mild-mannered science teacher uses Fibonacci numbers and flowers to plan his murders.
Buck Privates (1941) IMDB **** Abbott and Costello have some hilarious math-based routines.
Bullshot (1983) IMDB *** How to hunt: "By rapidly calculating the pigeon's angle of elevation in the reflection of your monocle, then subtracting the refractive index of its lens, I positioned myself at a complementary axis and fired." And a dumb blonde recalls a formula: "It started with a capital N, and then there was a little A, followed by a 3. Ah, then there was a squiggle above a tick, and ah ... a hot cross bun sign."
Cabiria (1914) IMDB *** The earliest movie we know of containing math. Archimedes uses a compass (?) to design his ship-burning mirrors.
Caddyshack (1980) IMDB ** Comedy golf scene: to illustrate that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, Chevy Chase makes his ball jump over another one into the hole.
Calabuch (1956) IMDB ** Some singing of times tables, and a retired physicist writes some equations on a wall.
Carreteras Secundarias (Backroads) (1997) IMDB * In a failed attempt to keep him from his father's criminal ways, Felipe is provided with a tutor: "OK, again. The derivative of the function at x is the tangent of the curve at the given point. ... it's very easy, it's just you don't pay attention. The tangent and derivative are the same." Felipe punches the tutor in the nose.
Carry on Teacher (1959) IMDB ** A smug supervisor interrupts math class, to test how kids react to him noting down two-digit numbers with the two digits reversed. Ends with a kid asking him to write down 33.
Cartesius (1974) (TV) IMDB *** More philosophy than math in Roberto Rossellini's biopic. One extended scene has Descartes solving a gravitational problem posed by the mathematician Isaac Beeckman. The mathematician Marin Mersenne makes a brief appearance.
Casino Royale (2006) IMDB * M describes the villain Le Chiffre as a mathematical prodigy. Bond apparently isn't: he declares Le Chiffre had a 23 to 1 chance of the river card turning his two pair into a full house. The correct odds are 10.5 to 1.
Cast Away (2000) IMDB ** Tom Hanks calculates the size of the circular area that his rescuers will have to search.
The Cat from Outer Space (1978) IMDB ** The cat from outer space compliments a human on his equations: "They are really not bad at all, for a human."
C'est le Tangente Que Je Préfère (1997) IMDB **** Alternate and more accurate title: Love, Math and Sex. The heroine is a mathematical prodigy. The non-sex includes quadratic equations, probability, topology, the Möbius strip, and a math competition.
Chaos (2005) IMDB ** A criminal who calls himself Lorentz leaves clues involving chaos theory (invented, according to the movie, by Edward Lorentz).
Chen Jingrun (2001) **** A 9-hour soapie about the famous Chinese mathematician, documenting Chen's simultaneous struggles with authoritarian thugs and the Goldbach conjecture.
Chicago (2002) IMDB * "In 47 years, Cook County ain't never hung a woman yet. So, the odds are 47 to 1 that they won't hang you."
Chicken Little (2005) IMDB * In the big game, the baseball scoreboard has the total runs added incorrectly.
Children of the Damned (1963) IMDB * Some geometry in the background, as a creepy child zooms through an I.Q. test.
Cipher in the Snow (1973) IMDB * A famous short film, a poignant story of a boy and his math teacher. No math.
Citizen Kane (1941) IMDB * Kane (Orson Wells) on blowing money on his pet newspaper: "You are right, I did lose a million dollars last year, I expect to lose a million dollars this year, I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know at a rate of a million dollars a year I'll have to close this place in 60 years."
Clan of the Cave Bear (1986) IMDB *** Daryl Hannan as a Cro-Magnon woman, the original mathematician. She learns how to count in fives, using a combination of fingers, doubling, and notches on a stick.
Class Action (1991) IMDB * An actuarial beancounter shows why it is cheaper to deal with law suits than to fix a deadly fault in some cars.
A Class Apart (2007) (TV) IMDB ** A few math school scenes, including the familiar "find X" − "Here it is!" Pythagoras joke.
Cloak and Dagger (1946) IMDB *** Gary Cooper in hiding passes the time by drawing on a wall, calculating the arc length of a trigonometric curve.
Clue (1985) IMDB *** Wadsworth the butler and Miss Scarlet have a very funny argument with sums, debating whether a gun is empty.
Clueless (1995) IMDB *** 7 times 7 is apparently too much to ask of someone who is really clueless.
The Cocoanuts (1929) IMDB *** Groucho and Chico have great fun with numbers at an auction. Chico also makes a pun on the word "radius".
The Code Conspiracy (2001) IMDB ** A silly thriller based around a bunch of guys working on "keyless encryption". Lots of mumbo jumbo in the style of the Bible Code. The main math guy mentions that primes are random.
Codename Icarus (1981) (TV) IMDB *** Martin is a form 4 student accused of cheating, because he solves a quadratic equation without performing all the steps. In his spare time, Martin corresponds by computer, setting and solving problems on the decomposing of Lie groups.
Colossus: The Forben Project (1970) IMDB *** Colossus is a supercomputer placed in charge of running America. It uses mathematics to establish communication with its Russian counterpart.
Conceiving Ada (1997) IMDB *** Turgidly told story of the mathematicians Ada Byron and Charles Babbage.
Contact (1997) IMDB *** SETI researchers detect an alien signal. The various layers of information are accessible via prime numbers and a cube. Also features a dodecahedron-shaped space capsule.
Copenhagen (2002) (TV) IMDB ** Werner Heisenberg and Nils Bohr are trying to make sense of a meeting they had during World War II. Lots of math and physics references.
The Core (2003) IMDB ** The first few prime numbers are used to encode a secret message.
The Count of Monte Cristo (2002) IMDB ** The Abbé and the Count calculate their progress with their escape tunnel. "Compute this. 2500 cubic centimeteres of rock and dust per day, for 365 days." "Equals three and a half meters a year, 12 feet, a foot a month, 3 inches a week". Newton's third law also gets a mention, and there appears to be some algebra on the cell wall.
Crazy (2000) IMDB ** A boy in a boarding school has problems with math (amongst other things).
Crazy First Love (Cheotsarang Sasu Gwolgidaehoe) (2003) IMDB ** Tae-il has worked feverishly on his school exams, to win the hand of Il-mae. He wails about the math he has endured: "What are all the criticial points, if there are any, of the function k(t) equals 1 divided by the square root of t squared plus 1. Answer. It's critical point is (0,1)!"
Creepshow (1982) IMDB ** Somebody at a party is introduced as a mathematician.
Croupier (1998) IMDB ** Jack haggles with a car dealer over his used car: "How about 1500?" "How about 500?". "What!?" "How about we split the difference? 750." "Is that your idea of arithmetic?" "I'm not a mathematician."
Cube (1997) IMDB ***** Six people wake up in a deadly maze, full of mathematical clues.
Cube 2: Hypercube (2002) IMDB ***** A new bunch of victims in a new deadly maze, this time supposedly a hollow hypercube.
Cutting Class (1989) IMDB *** A teen slasher flick. At one point, the killer sets the heroes a word problem involving trains, the answer indicating which door leads to safety. The heroes get it wrong.
D.A.R.Y.L. (1985) IMDB * Daryl is a robot in the form of a child. He has a habit of correcting the last decimal place of a person's calculation.
The Dam Busters (1955) IMDB ** Some vaguely mathematical bits in this movie about the famous bouncing bombs used by the British in WWII.
Dangerous Sex Date (Amorestremo) (2001) IMDB ** A movie consisting of 89 minutes of sex and murder, and 3 seconds of Riemann Christoffel symbols.
The Darwin Awards (2006) IMDB ** Harvey is a cautious man. 70% of accidents occur over the speed limit: allowing for a 10% error, he drives 35 in a 45 zone. Winona Ryder endures the explanation, and Billy Joel's "Slow down, you crazy child ..." playing in the background.
The Da Vinci Code (2006) IMDB *** The Fibonacci sequence makes an appearance in various scenes.
Dark Matter (2007) IMDB ** Excellent movie about a Chinese student who comes to America to do a PhD in cosmology. A little maths in the background.
The Day after Tomorrow (2004) IMDB * The teenage hero is introduced as a precocious math student.
The Day of the Beast (El Dia de la Bestia) (1995) IMDB *** The three heroes are trying to piece together a message from the devil consisting of a some letters written on individual pieces of paper: "My God." "There are hundreds of combinations." "Thousands of millions. There are 15 letters. A permutation of 15 elements with three letters repeated twice, and two letters repeated three times, giving us a total of 4,540,536,000 possibilities" (which is correct). Meanwhile, the dumbest of the three figures out the message.
Day One (1989) (TV) IMDB ** Story of the creation of the atom bomb, featuring Einstein, Oppenheimer and co. Some good blackboards along the way.
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) IMDB *** An alien visitor helps a professor with a mathematical problem and a school boy with his math homework. Great blackboard!
Deadly Friend (1986) IMDB ** A robot tries all possible three-number combinations of numbers ranging from 0 to 40, with his creator commenting on the number of such combinations.
Dead Poets Society (1989) IMDB ** Robin Williams as a poetry teacher does not think much of a mathematical way to calculate the greatness of a poem.
Dear Brigitte (1965) IMDB *** People want to use a young's boy mathematical abilities to gamble on the horses, but all he wants is to meet Brigitte Bardot. He gets his wish.
Death of a Cyclist (Muerte de Un Ciclista) (1955) IMDB *** Juan Fernandez is a mathematics professor, though he's too busy having affairs and running over cyclists to concentrate much on his math. In one extended scene we see an examined student filling a spectacular blackboard, full of cycloids and toroidal equations.
Death of a Neopolitan Mathematician (Morte di un Matematico Napoletano) (1992) IMDB **** Story of the suicide of the Italian mathematician Renato Caccioppoli. Some nice calculus scenes and interesting insights into the world of mathematicians.
Deep Rising (1998) IMDB ** Funny remark about being in the middle of nowhere and heading for "the middle of nowhere squared". A "you do the math" scene, involving the increasing size of murderous squid at increasing depths.
Deja Vu (2006) IMDB ** A scene in which a shortcut in space-time by folding is demonstrated by folding a piece of paper. Reminiscent of a similar scene in The Event Horizon.
Desk Set (1957) IMDB ** Some very funny Tracy-Hepburn exchanges. "My name is Richard Sumner". "Well, numerologically that's very good, there are thirteen letters in your name". "You calculate rapidly". "Up to thirteen anyway". Later Tracy tests her. "A train started out at Grand Central, with seventeen passengers aboard and a crew of nine. At 125th Street, four got off and nine got on. At White Plains, three got off and one got on. At Chappaqua, nine got off and four got on. And at each successive stop thereafter nobody got off, nobody got on till the train reached its next-to-the-last stop, where five people got off and one got on. Then it reached the terminal." "Well that's easy, eleven passengers and a crew of nine." "Uh, that's not the question." "I'm sorry." "How many people got off at Chappaqua?" "Nine." "That's correct." "Yes, I know."
Devil Girl From Mars (1954) IMDB * Nyah describes to Professor Hennessey the ultimate weapon: the perpetual motion chain reactor beam. "As fast as matter was created, it was changed by its molecular structure into the next dimension, and so destroyed itself." "So there is a fourth dimension!"
The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947) IMDB ** A bunch of (accurate) poker odds in one scene: "It was a hobby of my math professor: sort of taught me the percentages".
The Devil's Wanton (Fängelse) (1949) IMDB * Ingmar Bergman movie with a math teacher, but no math.
Diabolique (1996) IMDB * Sharon Stone as a math teacher, doing simple algebra in class.
Les Diaboliques (1955) IMDB ** Original version of the Sharon Stone movie. One of the main characters is a math teacher. Extended scene dedicated to a boy finding the area of a regular hexagon in terms of the radius of the circumcircle.
Diamonds are Forever (1971) IMDB * James Bond commenting that smuggling 50000 carats worth of diamonds at 142 carats an ounce won't be easy.
Dick Tracy (1990) IMDB ** Madonna singing a mathematical song: "Count your blessings, one, two, three. I just hate keeping score. Any number is fine with me. As long as it's more. As long as it's more! I'm no mathematician, all I know is addition. I find counting a bore. Keep the number mounting, your accountant does the counting ..."
The Dish (2000) IMDB * A few equations after the controllers of the Parkes radio telescope lose track of Apollo 11.
Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995) IMDB **** Bruce Willis and Samuel Jackson need to solve a jug problem in 30 seconds to defuse a bomb: using a 5 gallon jug a 3 gallon jug and a water fountain, fill the 5 gallon jug with 4 gallons. They also have to the famous chestnut: "As I was going to St Ives I met a man with seven wives. Every wife had seven sacks, every sack had seven cats. Every cat had seven kittens. Kittens, cats, sacks and wives, how many were going to St Ives?"
A Dog Called Vengeance (El Perro) (1976) IMDB ** Incomprehensible low budget political horror movie. The main character is The Professor, a mathematician who escapes from prison and is then pursued by a demon dog. The Professor mumbles about square roots at times, for no discernible reason.
Donald in Mathmagicland (1959) IMDB ***** This movie is for mathematics what Disney's Fantasia is for classical music.
The Dot and the Line (1965) IMDB *** Engaging animated story of the love between a dot and a line.
Doubt (2008) IMDB ** The writing out of multiplication tables is assigned as punishment (by the enlightened nun!). And a test is coming: "Is it long division?" "Among other things" "How much of it will be long division?"
The Draughtsman's Contract (1982) IMDB * "Drawing is an attribution worth very little, and in England worth nothing at all. If you must scribble, I suggest that your time would be better spent in studying mathematics."
Drawing Down the Moon (1997) IMDB *** Crazy Z-grade movie, with a margarita-swilling mathematician as the bad guy and a flaky witch as the good guy. A few fractals appear, for reasons which are hard to discern.
Drowning by Numbers (1988) IMDB ** Movie by Peter Greenaway. Girl counting from 1 to 100 while jumping rope. She is actually counting stars and stops at 100 because "once you've counted 100 all the other hundreds are the same." Signs counting from 1 to 100 appear throughout the movie.
Duck Soup (1933) IMDB * Groucho and Chico have a Marxian mathematical exchange: "Give me a number from 1 to 10". "11". "Right".
Dumbo (1941) IMDB *** Dumbo blows a cubical bubble. Discussion of the proportionality of the height of Dumbo's jumps, and the amount people laugh.
The Edge (1997) IMDB * Robert explains the value of having a watch with two faces: "If I'm in L.A. and I want to know the time in New York, I don't have to go through the anguish of adding 3".
El Efecto Mariposa (The Butterfly Effect) (1995) IMDB * Some probability talk, and a blackboard of equations in an economics lecture.
Einstein: Light to the Power of 2 (1996) (TV) IMDB ** In 50's America, a young black girl gets Einstein to help her with her math homework. Intended for schoolchildren.
The Englishman Who Went up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain (1995) IMDB ** Villagers are trying to raise their hill by 20 feet so it will officially be a mountain. Having piled up earth to raise the height 14 feet, the pastor declares they've broken the back of the problem. He is corrected by a villager, who apparently realizes that if it keeps its shape, the volume of a cone does not depend linearly on its height.
Enigma (2001) IMDB ** This movie is about Bletchley Park and the Enigma machine. The main character is modeled after Alan Turing, but not much math.
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Jeder Für Sich und Gott Gegen Alle) (1974) IMDB *** A pompous professor presents Kaspar Hauser with a misformed version of the Liar Puzzle: given one question, how do you tell whether a person is a truthteller or a liar? Kaspar's simple and hilarious solution is to ask the person if they are a tree-frog. The professor is not amused.
Entrapment (1999) IMDB ** Catherine Zeta-Jones says she wants a security clock to loose 10 seconds. She then rigs it to loose 1/10 of a second each minute, for an hour.
Eustice Solves a Problem (2004) ***** A terrific short film, set around a children's quiz program in 1958.
Évariste Galois (1965) IMDB **** The romanticized story of the night before Évariste Galois's famous duel.
Event Horizon (1997) IMDB ** Contains a nice scene in which a scientist folds a piece of paper to explain how bending space enables the spaceship Event Horizon to move faster than light.
Evil Roy Slade (1972) IMDB *** "Let's try some arithmetic: If you had six apples and your neighbor took three of them what would you have?" "A dead neighbor and all six apples."
Eyes Wide Shut (1999) IMDB * Carl is a mathematics professor, who appears for about three seconds. No maths.
Fahrenheit 451 (1966) IMDB ** In a regimented futuristic world, schoolchildren drone the nine times table (up to nine twenties).
Fail-Safe (1964) IMDB ** Walter Matthau as a psychopath game theorist is quizzed at a dinner party. "Two hours ago you said a hundred million dead, now you say sixty million." "I say sixty million is perhaps the highest price we should be prepared to pay in a war." "What's the difference between sixty million dead, and a hundred million?" "Forty million."
The Favor (1994) IMDB **** Fun romantic comedy with a mathematician as the husband (and Brad Pitt as the "favor"). Very funny scene of the mathematician's wife trying to seduce him as he rabbits on about nonlinear dynamics.
Fermat's Last Tango (2001) IMDB ***** Terrific musical about Fermat's last theorem, featuring Andrew Wiles, Pythagoras, Gauss, Euclid, Newton, and a deliciously vain Pierre de Fermat.
Fermat's Room (La Habitación de Fermat) (2007) IMDB ***** Four mathematicians are trapped in a shrinking room that can only be stopped from shrinking by solving a number of puzzles. The Goldbach conjecture plays a major role.
A Few Days in September (Quelques Jours En Septembre) (2007) IMDB * Orlando and David are siblings who continually fight over the cutting of dessert in "half". Eventually they hit upon the strategy of one person cutting and the other person choosing.
Fight Club (1999) IMDB * "Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply it by the probable rate of failure, B, then multiply the result by the average out of court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." "Which car company do you work for?"
Firetrap (2001) IMDB * An isolated scene containing a whiteboard with differential equations.
5ive Days to Midnight (2004) (TV) IMDB ** A physics professor receives a briefcase from the future, containing the report of his death. His PhD student tries to help by doing some mathematics of string theory.
First Circle (1992) (TV) IMDB ** One of the main characters is a mathematician in a special Soviet prison for scientists.
Flash Gordan (1980) IMDB *** Dr Zarkov saves the day by guessing the code of the elevator to be "one of the prime numbers of the Zeeman series".
Flatland (1965) IMDB **** A nice animated adaptation of Edwin Abbot's famous book about a two-dimensional world.
Flatland (Flatlandia) (1982) IMDB **** Michele Emmer's claymation adaptation of Edwin Abbot's famous book about a two-dimensional world.
Flatland (2007) IMDB **** Tedious adaptation of Edwin Abbot's classic.
Flatland: The Movie (2007) IMDB ***** State of the art animated adaptation of Edwin Abbot's classic Flatland.
The Flight That Disappeared (1961) IMDB ** Crazy movie about a mathematician and scientists being tried before a celestial court.
Flubber (1997) IMDB *** Robin Williams as Professor Phillip Brainard stumbles into a life drawing class and begins lecturing about gravity. Great improvisation involving the nude models and a dead pheasant.
For a Few Dollars More (1965) IMDB *** Lee Van Cleef is riding off as Clint Eastwood surveys the bodies of the outlaws, tallying the bounty. Realising it doesn't add up, he wheels around and shoots the remaining outlaw. "Any trouble, Boy?" "No, old man. Thought I was having trouble with my adding. It's alright now."
Forbidden Planet (1956) IMDB *** Dr. Morbius has mastered the language of an extinct civilization. At one point he illustrates very nicely their immense power resources, showing off a huge exponentially calibrated sequence of meters.
Force of Evil (1948) IMDB ** Gangster movie featuring an accountant called Two and Two, who's great at mental arithmetic.
Freaky Friday (2003) IMDB *** Jamie Lee Curtis is caught in her daughter Anna's, Lindsay Lohan's, body. She's reading a math exam question to herself: "The sum of the areas of the shaded regions above in terms of D is equal to (a) D squared times the sum of pi divided by 4 minus D divided by 2, (b) D squared times the sum of pi cubed divided by D minus 2. Now, what is pi again? 3 point something? Oh this is ridiculous, I've never used pi. Anna's never gonna use pi. Why's it called pi anyway? OK, focus ... Or (c) D cubed minus the sum of pi squared minus ..."
Freedom Man (1989) (TV) *** The story of Benjamin Banneker, the black American mathematician (more astronomer and engineer) from the 18th Century. It ends with a wonderful voiceover: "My whole life has been a mathematical proof of what a black man can do. I've been a clockmaker, a farmer, an astronomer, a surveyor, an almanac writer, a mathematician. ... And I add this, and this. And I hope the sum proves something to the World."
La Frontera (1991) IMDB * A math teacher gets involved in the political violence of Chile.
The Full Monty (1997) IMDB ** Gaz and his mates are contemplating how much they would make by stripping. "How many lasses were there, though?" "Thousands, baying for blood. Ten quid and all to watch some fucking poof get his kit off! Ten quid!" "Right. Times ten quid by a thousand, right? And you've got ... yeah well, a lot. A very lot."
Galileo (1975) IMDB ** Bertolt Brecht's play of Galileo (yay!) versus the Catholich Church (boo!). No mathematics, but we do have "these worms of mathematicians ... turn their tubes upon the sky". Pope Urban VIII declares "I will not set up myself against the multiplication table", then does just that.
The Gambler (1974) IMDB ** 2+2=5 is used as a metaphor for the gambler's belief that he can overcome the odds.
George of the Jungle (1997) IMDB * Before swinging to the rescue of a parachutist entangled in the cables of the Golden Gate Bridge, George calculates the angle and velocity of his swing.
Ghost of a Chance (Aionios Foititis) (2001) IMDB * "I'm bored." "Do some multiplication to pass the time. What's 410 times 20?" "1821."
The Giant Claw (1957) IMDB *** Sally Caldwell is "Mademoiselle Mathematician", helping to defeat a murderous chicken from outer space. There's some funny romantic math banter with the hero, and some improbable spiral interpolation to help predict the chicken's path.
The Girl Next Door (2004) IMDB ** The hero is a high school scholar whose plans get derailed. Various scenes with snapshots of exams and math texts.
The Glass Bottom Boat (1966) IMDB * Rod Taylor is a scientist recites some nonsense algebra in his pursuit of Doris Day: "COD plus XY to the second power plus OS, orbit shift, equals Mars and Venus joined." "Amazing sir. Do you think the World's ready for this?"
Good Will Hunting (1997) IMDB ***** Movie about a math prodigy, with tons of mathematics.
Gorath (Yosei Gorasu) (1962) IMDB * Weird sci-fi movie, where the Earth is moved to avoid a massive metor. A few PDE's in one scene.
Gravesend (1997) IMDB ** "I ain't fuckin' stupid! You think I'm fuckin' stupid? You give me any fuckin' math problem, any fuckin' math problem! I'll solve it right here, motherfucker!" As it happens, 2X + 12 = 39 is beyond him.
Graveyard Disturbance (Una Notte al Cimitero Una) (1987) IMDB *** Some teenagers are trying to escape from a cemetery that loops in on itself in an impossible way. They discuss it rather weirdly, in terms of Escher and non-Euclidean geometry.
The Great Man Votes (1939) IMDB * Gregory is to be taken on a long parade to lodge his vote at the voting booth a few feet away. He objects that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points.
Gulliver's Travels (1996) (TV) IMDB ** Archimedes, wearing a bath towel, runs around shouting "Eureka!".
H. P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witchhouse (2005) (TV) IMDB *** A physics grad student rents a room in a very creepy house. He decides that the source of the evil is a strange, non-Euclidean corner of his room.
Hands of a Murderer (1990) (TV) IMDB ** The battle between Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty is partially framed in terms of mathematics and codes. In the end, the key to the code involves no real mathematics.
Hans Christian Andersen (1952) IMDB *** Danny Kaye as the charming storyteller, teaching arithmetic: "A 2 met a 4 one day. They liked each other immediately and they danced away and got married, and all the other numbers came to their wedding". This is contrasted with drone-singing of arithmetic facts in the classroom.
The Happening (2008) IMDB ** "It's good to be a math teacher sometimes. People are comforted by percentages". Julian's next attempt at math-comforting involves asking a screaming woman how much she would have after a month if she received a penny the first day, 2 pennies the second day, 4 pennies the third day and so on.
Harold & Kumar Escape From Gauntanamo Bay (2008)
IMDB
*** Kumar is writing a love poem called The square root of 3, when he is interrupted by Vanessa struggling
with her "fucking calculus final". Kumar helps her with a double integral. Later, Kumar
read his poem:
I fear that I will always be
a lonely number, like root 3.
A 3 is all that's good and right.
Why must my 3 keep out of sight
Beneath a vicious square root sign?
I wish instead I were a 9.
For 9 could thwart this evil trick
with just some quick arithmetic.
I know I'll never see the sun as 1.7321.
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality.
When Hark!, what is this I see?
Another square root of a three
Has quietly come waltzing by. Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer, rejoicing as an integer.
We break free from our mortal bonds, and with a wave of magic wands
Our square root signs become unglued, and love for me has been renewed.
Hauser's Memory (1970) (TV) IMDB ** Hauser is a dying phsycisist, whose memories are implanted in Hillel, so that Hillel can recall Hauser's knowledge of weapons research: "F is expressed as a second order partial differential, with a peculiar symmetrical exponetial function below zero." Alas, Hillel cannot remember what F stands for. There's also a couple of spies carrying around a text on class field theory: it's not stated, but perhaps Huauser is supposed to have invented a Prime Number Missile.
Here Come the Co-eds (1945) IMDB ** Lou Costello and Peggy Ryan have some funny lines in a patter song. "Let's play school. Let's start out with subtraction, you'll get plenty of action!" "I think figures have such an attraction! Let's play school."
Hercules (1997) IMDB *** Some funny scenes, with characters mistating quantities being even or odd.
High and Low (Tengoku To Jigoku) (1963) IMDB ** Percentages of holdings in a company are calculated to see who has control. A 300 million yen ransom is demanded in specific denominations. The cops calculate how long it would take to mark the notes.
High School Musical (TV) (2006) IMDB *** The (high school!) teacher is writing up two of Ramanujan's formulas for 1/π, Pochhammer symbols and all. Vanessa immediately spots an error in the second equation, where the teacher has written 8/π instead of 16/π.
A Hill on the Dark Side of the Moon (Berget På Månens Baksida) (1983) IMDB **** Dark movie about the mathematician Sonja Kovalevskaya, featuring some lecture theatre scenes. The mathematicians Weierstrass and Mittag-Leffler make brief appearances.
Homage (1995) IMDB *** A brilliant young mathematician, with job offers from Princeton, is infatuated with a young actress. He becomes her mother's housekeeper.
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) IMDB * Some whiteboards filled with math plus a few formulas viewed through a looking glass.
Hot for Teacher (Nuga Geunyeo-Wa Jasseulkka?) (2006) IMDB ** 'Slanted Eyes', a sadistic math teacher, sees his students distracted by the new, sexy teacher. One crazy scene of a student calculating logarithms, while others are forced to cling to the blackboard.
Hotel Hilbert (1996) IMDB **** David Hilbert's vision of infinities is brought to life in story form. Quite strange, and a lot of fun. It includes a sand reckoner, literally counting the grains of sand on the beach.
How Green Was My Valley (1941) IMDB *** Huw and his father and tutor are puzzling over a word problem. "Now then. The bathtub holds 100 gallons. A fills it at 20 gallons a minute, and B at the rate of 10 gallons a minute... Now then, C is a hole that empties it at 5 gallons a minute. How long, um, to fill the tub?" Huw's mothers just laughs: "Who would pour water into a bathtub full of holes?"
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) IMDB * At the basketball game, the scoreboard indicates the Knicks have a score of 93, but the player totals add to 94.
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) IMDB ** The circle is used throughout as a symbol of elegance and simplicity.
I Killed Einstein, Gentlemen (Zabil Jsem Einsteina, Panove) IMDB (1970) ** Crazy sci-fi movie with people going back in time to kill Einstein. Some Lorentz equations and a little weird quizzing with arithmetic. "At first we calculated that M equals rho 2P over 2, R over 3..." "But it seemed that the universe was crooked."
I Not Stupid (Xiaohai Bu Ben) IMDB (2002) * Some students in a dead end class are inspired by their teacher: "... I hated math. But the more I hated it the worse it got. Then I decided to spend time to know it better, and to be friends with it ...
I Walked With a Zombie (1943) IMDB * A woman and a man are sitting in a cafe. Man to waiter: "Better bring me another, I have to keep the lady entertained." "Must be hard work entertaining me that requires six ounces of rum." "Six ounces?" "Higher mathematics. Two ounces to a drink, three drinks, six ounces."
I Went Down (1997) IMDB *** A kidnap victim is strapped to a bed. When he drops the TV remote, he is forced to watch some program about the fundamental theorem of algebra, presented by stereotypically boring mathematicians.
I.Q. (1994) IMDB **** Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins give a romantic resolution to Zeno's paradox. Also, there's mathematical sign language, puzzles, Albert Einstein and the logician Kurt Gödel.
Ice Princess (2005) IMDB *** Michelle Trachtenberg plays a physics wiz who analyzes ice skating as an honours project, helping her fellow skaters. Lots of brief references to centripetal acceleration, angular momentum and the like.
The Ice Storm (1997) IMDB *** A kid explains, with some reason, that he's not good at math, just good at geometry: "It's like, you know when they say 'two squared'? You think it means 2 times 2 equals 4. But really, they really mean a square. It's really space, it's not numbers it's space. And it's perfect space, but only in your head, because you can't draw a perfect square in the material world. But in your mind, you can have perfect space. You know?"
Idiocracy (2006) IMDB *** An average Joe from today wakes up in the future and finds himself the most intelligent man on Earth. He is forced to take an IQ test: "If you have one bucket that holds 2 gallons, and another bucket that holds 5 gallons, how many buckets do you have?"
Imperativ (1982) IMDB **** Dark movie about a suicidal math professor. He specializes in probability theory, and one of his students works out a system to win at roulette.
In July (2000) IMDB *** Daniel is a shy fellow training to be a math teacher. He gives a painful lesson on projectile motion. Later he tries it with a real car, to cross a 25 meter river at a 10 degree incline. He correctly calculates the necessary speed to be about 96 kilometers per hour, but seemingly underestimated the width of the river.
The Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells (2001) (TV) IMDB **** The Pyecraft episode in this miniseries is a fun fantasy about a gentle mathematician.
Infinity (1996) IMDB **** Movie about Richard Feynman featuring the Möbius strip, an abacus, and an explanation of infinity.
An Innocent Love (1982) (TV) IMDB ** A young boy tutors a school senior in calculus (differentiating polynomials).
Insignificance (1985) IMDB *** Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe have an exchange of ideas. Marilyn demonstrates the Theory of Relativity using toy trains and flash lights. Albert explains (not quite correctly) the shape of the universe as a 3-dimensional sphere.
Inspector Lewis (2006) (TV) IMDB **** The Goldbach Conjecture and a Fields medalist are at the center of a murder mystery.
In the Navy (1941) IMDB ***** Just one scene: the famous and hilarious routine in which Costello proves 7x13=28 in three different ways.
Intacto (2001) IMDB * Weird gambling movie, with people stealing others' luck. A little probability and arithmetic.
The Invisible Boy (1957) IMDB ** Dr. Merrinoe works at the Stoneman Institute of Mathematics. When he's not playing with a supercomputer, he's asking his son Timmie painful questions on fractions: "how many twenty-fourths are there in one and a quarter?" "Three? Seventeen. Forty-four? A hundred?"
Ishtar (1987) IMDB ** Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty are offered a gig in Honduras. "How much?" "150 Lempiras a week. That's 75 dollars in American money ...". "That's only 37.50 a week for each of us!" "Heyyyy, that's right! You got a good head for figures".
The Island (2005) IMDB ** In a futuristic world, the immigrants to the paradise Island are determined by a supposedly random lottery. Jones Three Echo correctly suspects otherwise. He unsuccessfully tries to figure out the formula underlying the lottery.
It's a Big Country (1951) IMDB ** The teacher asks Joseph to divide 8 into 240 , but he can't because "the numbers are too small". It turns out he needs glasses.
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) IMDB *** 8 people in 4 groups with 5 leaders try to decide the fair way to divide the $350 000 they're hunting for. They decide to create 25 shares of $14 000 each, which keeps everyone happy for about two minutes.
It's My Turn (1980) IMDB ***** Light romantic movie about a female mathematician. Famous among mathematicians because the full proof of the Snake Lemma is given in the first scene. Tons of mathematics and mathspotting on blackboards.
Izo (2004) IMDB *** An angry samurai ghost charges around on a Möbius strip.
Jam Films 2 − Armchair Theory (2004) IMDB **** In a fantasy sequence we see one Japanese warrior shoot an arrow at another warrior who is running away, illustrating one of Zeno's paradoxes: When the arrow has reached the point at which the second warrior was when the arrow was fired he has already moved to a second point. When the arrow reaches that point he has moved to a third point, etc.
Jan Amos Comenius (Putování Jana Amose) (1983) IMDB ** René Descartes makes a very brief appearance. No speaking lines.
Jane Eyre (2006) IMDB * A couple little math bits when Jane Eyre is acting as governess.
Jason X (2001) IMDB ** A cute android named Kay-Em calculates the probability of the team's survival at 12%. After Tsunaron kisses her, she calculates the odds at 53%. He suggests they try for 100%.
Julie Johnson (2001) IMDB **** Julie Johnson is a downtrodden white trash housewife who turns out to be a mathematical genius. Tedious and humorless, but lots of math, mostly chaos theory. Mischa Baton plays the daughter. She has the Cantor Set explained to her, and is less than impressed.
Jurassic Park (1993) IMDB *** Jeff Goldblum as a cool mathematician. He impresses a woman with an explanation of chaos theory by conducting a little experiment on her hand that illustrates the butterfly effect.
Jurassic Park 2 (The Lost World) (1997) IMDB ** Jeff Goldblum is back as the cool mathematician. No math this time.
Jurassic Park III (2001) IMDB * Jeff Goldblum does not appear this time, but he and his book on chaos theory are made fun of.
The Karate Kid, Part II (1986) IMDB ** The karate kid discovers that a market stall is using a disguised light weight with their scales, supposedly in order to cheat the farmers of their produce. In fact, using such a weight would benefit the farmers.
The Keeper: The Legend of Omar Khayyam (2005) IMDB **** Movie about the life of the mathematician Omar Khayyam and one of his descendents. More romance than math, but there are some good scenes.
Kelly's Heroes (1970) IMDB ** A soldier is praised for doing following calculation in his head: 125 boxes at $8400 a box = $10 500 500.
Kes (1969) IMDB * Some simple math in a classroom setting.
Knocked Up (2007) IMDB ** 10 years ago Ben got $14000, and he has $900 left. "So that should last me for like ... I mean I'm not a mathematician, but like another 2 years, or some shit, I think." He's out by 16 months.
Knowing (2009) IMDB * Painful apocalypse movie, with a few equations and numerology and the like.
Kronos (1957) IMDB * Silly sci-fi movie with a bit of nonsensical mathtalk.
Kuriton Sukupolvi (1957) IMDB ** A math professor arises from his years of work into the era of rock and roll. No math.
L: Change the World (2008) IMDB *** L tries to save the world from terrorists with a killer virus. A little boy, a survivor of the virus, turns out to be a mathematical genius. He is discovered drawing magic squares on a wall, and supposedly arranges Fibonacci numbers with marshmallows (though the pattern is unclear). Later he solves a complicated geometry problem, the key to a critical code.
Labyrinth (1986) IMDB *** Fun fantasy version of the Liar Puzzle in action: deciding which of two doors to choose when one is guarded by a truthteller and one by a liar. Plus, the musician David Bowie as the king of the goblins running around a maze inspired by Escher's drawing Relativity.
Lambada (1990) IMDB ***** Stand and Deliver with dirty dancing. Blade is a supercool math teacher who inspires his students. Most memorable cheesy scene: Blade demonstrates the usefulness of math by making a near impossible three-cushion (pool) shot using "the rectangular coordinate system" and a protractor.
The Land of College Prophets (2005) IMDB * Rye is a philosophizing thug who is apparently good at mathematics. He helps his professor friend, something about stopping rabbits from exploding. Don't ask us.
Las Vegas Shakedown (1955) IMDB ** A math teacher travels to Las Vegas to do research for her book, which is supposed to show that the casinos always win (well, duh). Some humorous lines about a companion's gambling system.
Las Vegas Weekend (1986) IMDB *** Crazy B-grade comedy about a mathematician with a scheme to beat blackjack. Some weird and humorous lines about infinity and probability.
The Last Casino (2004) IMDB ** Same plot as 21, and a much better movie: A math professor organizers some students into a blackjack team. It includes a very funny scene, where the professor tests a waitress's memory by ordering a complicated pizza with mutliple toppings, substitutions and a rotation. (She gets it right). One of the students memorizes digits of π for fun.
The Last Enemy (2008) IMDB *** Dr. Stephen Izard is the mathematician hero of this brave new worldish miniseries. The only math is in the first episode, where Stephen explains his research to Andrew and Brian, owners of the company Inquirendo: "... let Ric be the Ricci curvature, and the gammas are the Christoffel symbols. The idea is to show that under the Ricci flow, positive curvature tends to spread outwards, uh, until at infinite time, the manifold will achieve constant curvature. Now let us consider a generalization of this, the form F is a nice, smooth function. Even in this state the flow will develop singularities in finite time. But, by using a local version of the Gromov compactness theorem, I've been able to get a model of all possible singularities ..." This is actually real mathematics, underlying Perelman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture. Andrew tries to explain the importance of Stephen's reasarch to Brian, a non-mathematician, that it has to do with "topology ... rubber sheet geometry" and "the shape of the Universe". Brian doesn't follow very well: "I thought it had something to do with killer bees".
Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année dernière à Marienbad) (1961) IMDB *** Pretentious movie using the mathematical game of Nim in a pretentious and absurd manner.
Late Bloomers (1996) IMDB *** Excrutiating lesbian chick flick. Miss Groshardt (sheesh!) is a math teacher who has an affair with Mrs. Lumpkin (another sheesh!), the wife of a fellow math teacher. Includes some algebra, a proof of Pythagoras's theorem, and the exclamation "she's aardvarking with the Hypotenuse".
Life is Beautiful (La Vita è Bella) (1997) IMDB *** During WWII the local Nazis in an Italian town are having the following conversation at a formal dinner. The primary school principal: "And I am not talking about Berlin, the countryside, 3rd grade. Listen to this one. Really, it's quite shocking. The problem: Supporting a lunatic costs the state 4 marks a day, supporting a cripple costs 4 1/2 marks, an epileptic 3 1/2 marks. Figuring the average is 4 marks a day and there are 300,000 of them, how much would the state save if these individuals were simply eliminated?" "Completely unbelievable!" "That is exactly how I reacted." "Completely unbelievable. I can't believe an elementary school child is expected to solve something like this. It's a difficult calculation, the proportions, the percentages, they need some algebra to solve these equations, right? That would be highschool material for us." "No, no, it's just multiplication, what did you say it was, 300,000 cripples?" "Yes." "300,000 times four. We'd be saving about 1,200,000 marks a day if we killed them all. It's easy." "Exactly, bravo, but you are an adult. In Germany 7-year-olds are given this problem to work out. The most amazing race indeed."
Like Mike (2002) IMDB ** Calvin gets help with his geometry homework from the basketballer Tracy. Tracy paints huge triangles on his house, with the vertices labeled as Dennis Rodman and The Shaq and so on.
Little Big League (1994) IMDB **** Contains a hilarious scene, where the Minnesota Twins baseball team is trying to solve their teenage manager's homework: If Joe can paint a house in 3 hours and Sam can paint it in 5 hours, how long does it take for them to do it together?
Little Giant (1946) IMDB **** Abbott and Costello do their terrific 7 x 13 = 28 routine. Not quite as good as the original.
Little Man Tate (1991) IMDB **** A movie featuring two mathematical prodigies. Lots of math: math competitions, building tensegrity icosahedra, etc.
The Lost Angel (2004) IMDB * A serial murderer leaves clues in the form of Babylonian cuneiform script. The plan is to kill 20 people to complete a satanic ritual. Right next to victim number four we see the numbers 4 and 16 in cuneiform script written in blood (4 done, 16 to go).
Lost Souls (2000) IMDB ** Possessed man keeps writing numbers, the name of the anti-Christ in code.
Love and Death (1975) IMDB *** Woody Allen movie with a couple funny math bits, e.g. designing blintzes with geometry on a blackboard.
Love Me if You Dare (Jeux d'Enfants) (2003) IMDB *** The 7 times multiplication tables gets yelled out for no discernible reason. Also some discriminants, and some dirty math talk: "Your vector is defined by an origin, but above all by size ...".
Lucky Pierre (La Moutarde Me Monte Au Nez) (1974) IMDB *** Pierre Richard as a frazzled math teacher, including some hilarious classroom slapstick: all in French, but it doesn't matter.
Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm (1951) IMDB *** Ma and Pa Kettle's version of the famous Abbott and Costello routine. They show in three different ways that 5 x 14 = 25. Not as good as the Abbott and Costello versions.
Madame Curie (1943) IMDB ** Madame Curie asks her future husband a mathematical question about symmetries.
Magic Town (1947) IMDB ** Somebody locates the ideal town for polling: its population thinks exactly like America as a whole.
Magik and Rose (1999) IMDB *** A square dance caller and snails egg farmer also turns out to be a math wiz, who knows everything about fractals and chaos theory.
Malcolm X (1992) IMDB * Malcolm X explains his name, using X as the mathematical symbol of the unknown.
A Man Called Intrepid (1979) (TV) IMDB * Two characters talk about the Enigma machine.
The Man From Planet X (1951) IMDB ** Geometry is suggested as the way to communicate with an alien.
The Manhattan Project (1986) IMDB ** A scientist and a juvenile bomb maker are trying to figure out how much time they have left to defuse a bomb.
Man of the House (2005) IMDB * Cheerleaders get into geomtric formation so that a girl on top of a bus can jump into their arms. When she hesitates, one of the cheerleaders yells out "I'm a math major".
Manolito Gafotas (1999) IMDB ** Manolito fails a math test for the first time and is comforted by his father: "Cervantes, Einstein, Karl Marx, Jules Verne. All geinuses, but don't think they were good at math." "What did their mothers say?" "They understood in the end." Later, Moanolito has to study over the summer. Mostly his study seems to consist of him calculating how many hours left in the summer to study.
The Man Without a Face (1993) IMDB **** Mel Gibson as a scary math teacher quizzes a boy on Pythagoras's Theorem, and teaches him a Euclidean theorem on how to find the centre of a circle: he goofs it!
Marius (1931) IMDB ** César teaches Marius how to mix a picon-citron-curacao: one very small third of curacao, one third of citron, a large third of picon, and, finally, a really large third of water.
Matilda (1996) IMDB *** Little Matilda is a math genius and has supernatural abilities. Some fun scenes.
The Matrix Revolutions (2003) IMDB *** Neo gets stuck in a train station, which loops around à la Pacman.
Meerabai Not Out (2008) IMDB ** Meera is a math teacher and a cricket fanatic. So she teaches arithmetic with batting averages: "In the first four matches Dravid makes 36, 21, 34, 20 runs, so how many runs does he have to make in the next 4 innings to average 75 runs?". A student correctly answers 72.25 runs per innings.
Meet Dave (2008) IMDB *** Eddie Murphy is an alien who finds himself as a substitute teacher in front of a primary class. He decides to play safe and teach them something simple: the unified field theory.
Mean Girls (2004) IMDB **** A great movie for math spotting on blackboards. The main character (Lindsay Lohan) is very good at math. Encouraged by her teacher (Tina Fey) and against the advice of her friends ("social suicide"), she joins the school math club and takes part in a math competition.
Mercury Rising (1998) IMDB * features an autistic boy who is a wiz at cracking codes.
Merry Andrew (1958) IMDB ***** Danny Kaye plays a math teacher who teaches Pythagoras's Theorem by singing and dancing.
The Mirror has Two Faces (Le Miroir à Deux Faces) (1958) IMDB ** Teacher asks: What is the smallest number with three digits? The student's answer of 000 is declared incorrect.
The Mirror has Two Faces (1996) IMDB ***** A romantic comedy about a math professor who is dragged out of his shell. Tons of math.
Miss Congeniality 2 (2005) IMDB * In one classroom scene there is a blackboard with multiplication problems.
Moebius (1996) IMDB *** A subway train goes missing in the subway network of Buenos Aires. A topologist is called in to investigate. He concludes that the new section is acting like a Möbius band (whatever that means).
Momo Alla Conquista Del Tempo (2001) IMDB ** Fun arithmetic scenes, some with shaving cream.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) IMDB *** Very strange logic is used to convict a woman of witchcraft.
Mortel Transfert (2001) IMDB * A frazzled math teacher appears in one scene.
Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982) IMDB *** While competing in the Germany vs. Greece football match, Archimedes has his Eureka moment: kick the ball. His team scores against the German goalkeeper: Leibniz. Also, the Pythons argue over what an argument is, and "René Descartes is a drunken fart" gets a mention in the Australian Philosphers' Song.
Morons from Outer Space (1985) IMDB ** A mathematician writes an incomplete equation to test one of the moron's mathematical abilities. "Now, Can you complete that?" " ... Can you?" "Of course." "Then what are you asking me for?"
Mozart and the Whale (2005) IMDB ***** A charming romantic movie about two people with Asperger's syndrome, one with strong mathematical abilities. Some touching and funny scenes about mathematical literalism and primes, and factoring license plates.
Mr. Holland's Opus (1995) IMDB * "If I'm forced to choose between Mozart, and reading and writing and long division, I choose long division."
Mr. Koumal Invents a Robot ** A short, amusing cartoon. Mr. Koumal's design involves a lot of work with protractor, ruler, π, arithmetic and so on.
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (2007) IMDB *** Dustin Hoffman as Mr. Magorium quizzes his pontential accountant (whom he dubs "Mutant"): "Name the Fibonacci series from its 11th to its 16th integer." "Uh, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610?" "Perfect! The number 4, do we really need it?". "If you like squares, you do." "Oh, I like squares!" Of course, Mutant actually only went up to the 15th Fibonacci "integer".
Mr. Wacky (Saeng, Nalseonsaeng) (2006) IMDB ** The lead character is blackmailed by his grandfather into being a math teacher. One frenzied probability lecture, and a math book gets torn up and scattered to the winds, but no real math.
Münchhausen (1943) IMDB * Dürer's magic square appears in the background in one of the scenes.
Murder is Easy (1982) (TV) IMDB ** A mathematician helps solve a murder.
The Music of Chance (1993) IMDB ** Two guys win the lottery by choosing primes.
My Little Chickadee (1940) IMDB ** Very funny 1-liner from W. C. Fields about whether poker is a game a chance: "Not the way I play it, no".
My Night With Maud (Ma Nuit Chez Maud) (1969) IMDB *** Three people discussing (amongst other things) probability and Pascal's wager.
My Stepmother is an Alien (1988) IMDB ** The alien stepmother (Kim Bassinger) says that she does math on vacation, and graphs for fun.
My Teacher's Wife (1995) IMDB *** The teacher in question is a math teacher, and his sexy wife (Tia Carrere) has a PhD in math.
National Lampoon's Senior Trip (1995) IMDB * A couple stray lines about math nerds.
The Naughty Nineties (1945) IMDB *** Very funny routine, with Abbott guiding Costello in roulette. "I'll tell you what you do, you play the same numbers I play. I'll play number twenty and you play twenty too." "How can you do that?" "Why not?" "We're gonna play the same numbers?" Same numbers?" "You want me to play twenty-two?" "No, no. I'm gonna play twenty, and you play twenty-two". And so on.
Never Been Kissed (1999) IMDB ** Very catchy mathsy song is playing while we see The Denominators, members of a math club, in math action. The movie includes a hilariously bad expansion of π.
Newton: a Tale of Two Isaacs (1997) (TV) IMDB *** A romanticised biography of Isaac Newton, intended for schoolchildren. Cheesy but fun, with a little mathematics of gravitation.
Ni Vivo, Ni Muerto (2002) IMDB ** A mathematician gets in involved in the political violence in Argentina. A couple ODE's in the background.
Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) IMDB *** The Egyptian Kahmunrah awakens and wants the code to unlock the Gate to the Underworld. It turns out to be π "the number at the heart of the pyramids". Weirder, the code is the decimal expansion of π. There's also a funny bit where Larry teases Kahmunrah for not knowing about the secrets of the Cube of Rubik.
No Highway in the Sky (1951) IMDB *** Jimmy Stewart plays a boffin investigating his theory about metal fatigue in airplanes. When (luckily) his theory seems to be wrong, Marlene Dietrich teases him for multiplying when he should have divided. In his spare time, Stewart tries to solve Goldbach's conjecture. "Sounds interesting, but, isn't it a little pointless?" "Oh, quite. That's the beauty of it."
No One Would Tell (1996) (TV) IMDB * A little school algebra in one scene.
Novo (2002) IMDB ** Graham/Pablo cannot remember things but is supposedly very good at mental arithmetic, and Isabelle tests him. He asks him 347 x 347 and 4092 x 6549. Unbeknownst to Isabelle (blooper?), he gets them both wrong. He's then working on (7685 x 7639) − √ 7639, but gets distracted by Isabelle's legs.
Not One Less (Yi Ge Dou Bu Neng Shao) (1999) IMDB *** Very sweet Chinese movie about a 13 year old girl who starts teaching in a poor mountain school, and who goes off to find a student lost in the city. Extended scenes where the children are calculating the number of bricks they need to haul to be paid enough to afford the necessary bus tickets.
No Way Out (1987) IMDB * Quick reference to eigenvalues and Fourier transforms, for cleaning up data.
The Number 23 (2007) IMDB ** Jim Carrey discovers a thousand crazy ways to add up to 23. And there's one vector integral, for God knows what reason.
The Nugget (2002) IMDB ** Eric Bana and his mates clumsily work out how much their huge gold nugget is worth. The final sum is incorrect.
Ocean's Eleven (2001) IMDB * One "You do the math" scene and one "Imagine the odds" scene.
October Sky (1999) IMDB ** A kid in a coal mining community wants to become a rocket scientist. He realizes that he'll have to get good at math.
Office Space (1999) IMDB ** A weird comedy about computer programmers skimming money by rounding down their company's paychecks to the nearest cent.
Oh God! Book II (1980) IMDB *** George Burns as God helps a little girl do her math: the father is impressed by his work. God also admits to mistakenly making math too hard.
Old School (2003) IMDB ** Some very old frat boys take an exam. Apparently Harriot's method for solving cubics is a "generally accepted graphical technique for determining first order system parameters".
Omar Khayyam (1957) IMDB *** Cornel Wilde is an improbable Omar Khayyam in this Hollywood biopic. A lot of poetry and romance, and a little bit of math.
Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era Una Volta Il West) (1968) IMDB ** Some funny arithmetic 1-liners. Three bad guys with their horses, to the horseless Charles Bronson: "Looks like we're shy of one horse". Bronson's response: "You brought two too many".
Outside Providence (1999) IMDB ** Dunphy fails to solve an already solved quadratic. Having worked very hard, he later successfully solves the exact same already solved quadratic.
P.S. (2004) IMDB * One physics lecture contains blackboards full of formulas on gravitation.
Les Passagers (1999) IMDB ** A gay ex-math teacher concludes that gays being hardest hit by AIDS is a simple matter of arithmetic.
Patch Adams (1998) IMDB * A brilliant scientist in an insane asylum does math and frustrates people by holding up 4 fingers and challenging them: "How many fingers do you see?"
Pay it Forward (2000) IMDB ** For his school social studies project, Trevor thinks to offer life-changing help to three people, who are each then inspired to similarly offer help to three people, and so on. A bit of mathematics, figuring out the geometric explosion.
Peter the Great (1986) (TV) IMDB *** Peter the Great visits Isaac Newton to discuss his Principia.
Petersen (1974) IMDB ** Real-live mathematician Iain Aitchison appears in a crowd scene.
The Phantom Tollbooth (1970) IMDB *** When Milo visits Digitopolis, its ruling Mathemagician convinces him of the infinity of numbers by adding 1 again and again. Earlier, the Mathemagician sings a version of Zeno's paradox, suggesting that Milo keep dividing his troubles in two until they disappear.
Phase IV(1974) IMDB ** A mathematician communicates with intelligent ants.
Phenomenon (1996) IMDB * John Travolta turns into a genius with special abilities. In one scene we see him listing through a math book.
Pi (1998) IMDB ***** The mathematical prodigy Max is looking for pattern in nature and in the stock market. Tons of math.
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) IMDB ** One of the teachers who goes missing at Hanging Rock is a math teacher. We see her reading a geometry text.
The Pirates of Penzance (1983) IMDB *** Famous song: I am the very model of a modern Major-General ... I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical. I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical. About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news. With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse ...
Planeta Bur (Planet of Storms) (1962) IMDB ** One of the characters is a mathematician. No math.
Plaga Zombie (1997) IMDB ** Max is a mathematician, one of three non-zombie pals in a town of zombies. No math.
Plaga Zombie: Zona Mutante (2001) IMDB ** Max is back, in the sequel to Plaga Zombie. Still no math.
Pleasantville (1998) IMDB *** In the sitcom world of Pleasantville, a geography teacher explains how the town loops back on itself. Very funny scene, but on the DVD commentary the writer-director shows he's completely confused.
Popstar (2005) IMDB *** The popstar befriends the math geek in order to survive calculus. Such a painful movie, you end up cheering for the Heathers. Somehow the Mean Value Theorem is used to graph x times cosine y.
Possible Worlds (2000) IMDB *** Excellent multiverse movie, reminiscent of Brain Dead. George talks of doing a problem on a math test at school, and seeing himself in another world, doing the problem in a different way. In another scene, George is in a job interview, and instantly sees the trick behind a very convoluted finance problem. "You did the sums in your head?" "Yes." "... The next question will be a little more difficult ..." The screenplay and original play are by John Mighton, math consultant on Good Will Hunting.
Il Posto (1961) IMDB ** The main character applies for a job. A main part of the assessment test is to solve the following problem: We have a roll of copper wire 520 meters long. Three-quarters of it are cut off. Of the remainder, we cut off four-fifths. How many centimeters of wire are left on the roll?" He's got one hour to solve this problem. His (and his friend's) answer of 24 is wrong, even ignoring the units. Still, he gets the job.
Presumed Innocent (1990) IMDB ** A jealous wife (who happens to be a mathematician working on her dissertation) commits murder and gets away with it.
Primer (2004) IMDB * Cool time travel movie, with a few math references: "The best mathematician's a lazy one".
The Prince and the Pauper (1990) IMDB *** Mickey Mouse as the prince has to sit through a very boring trigonometry lesson.
The Professor and his Beloved Equation (Hakase no Aishita Sûshiki) (2006) IMDB ***** Lovely movie about a mathematics professor who only remembers things for a short time. He likes perfect and amicable numbers and his favorite equation is Euler's identity: eiπ+1=0.
Proof (2005) IMDB ***** Excellent adaptation of David Auburn's excellent play. Gwyneth Paltrow is a troubled mathematician, coming to terms with the death of her troubled mathematician father.
Prophecy (1995) IMDB ** Christopher Walken as a cynical angel: "See ya, kids. Study your math. Key to the universe."
Prospero's Books (1991) IMDB * One of Prospero's books is a math book featuring animated geometric drawings.
Punch Lady (Peon-chi Le-i-di) (2007) IMDB ** A woman who is training for a kickboxing fight with her abusive husband, and a math teacher falls into guiding her. He comes up with a complicated plan involving precise angles of kicks and dodges: wisely, she ignores him.
A Pure Formality (Una Pura Formalità) (1994) IMDB *** A famous writer has written a book about a mathematician (Claude?) Shannon, and attributes his passion for math to one of his math teachers. He ponders projective geometry: "Two parallel lines can never meet. Nonetheless, it is possible to imagine the existence of a point so far out in space so far into infinity that we can believe and acknowledge that our two lines do in fact meet there. We shall call this point the ideal point."
Quality Street (1937) IMDB *** A very funny scene: an arithmetic problem with herring, and the suggestion to use real herring to check the answer. Some of the very funny math lines from J. M. Barrie's play failed to make it to the movie.
Quest of the Delta Knights (1993) IMDB ** Archimedes being killed by a Roman soldier.
Qui Perd Gagne! (Loser Takes all) (2003) IMDB *** A math teacher claims to have found a system for predicting the lottery and proves it by winning the jackpot twice. An expert gambler with a perfect memory is called in by the police to catch the supposed cheat. Fun movie with lots of math and mathematically-minded people.
Race for the Bomb (1987) (TV) IMDB ** The mathematician John von Neumann makes a fleeting appearance: it may have been a larger role in the original, much longer version.
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) IMDB * In one scene there's a blackboard with kinematic equations.
Rain Man (1988) IMDB ** Dustin Hoffmann is autistic, and really good at numbers.
Raising Genius (2004) IMDB *** Ugh! This brain-piercing movie contains the single most annoying math character of all time. (No, we haven't forgotten Late Bloomers). The monumentally whiny Hal has locked himself in the bathroom to do his math (PDE's). And to to ogle Lacy, the practising cheerleader over the fence (Danica McKellar). He refuses to come out ("I can't leave my Lipschitz conditions"), and gets annoyed at Lacy's repeated losing the beat on "seven". At the end, he realises that the "Lacy Perturbation" is the key to his equations.
Reality Bites (1994) IMDB ** Winona Ryder and Ben Stiller are discussing how they loved astronomy except for the math: "It was like, everything was three squared, times pi, equals the root of ... pi, yeah ... and I just wanted to look at the stars." Later, David Spade tests Winona to be a cashier at a fast food restaurant: "85 and 45. Go!" "... One f-forty." "Nope". "One f-fifty." "Nope." "One sixty." "It's not an auction".
Real Genius (1985) IMDB *** Three consecutive lectures: Less and less students and more and more recording devices. In the last scene even the lecturer is replaced by a recording.
Red Planet (2000) IMDB *** Some astronauts have just crashlanded on Mars and are trying to figure out where they are: "All the mission data is in here we just got to close in on the downrange variables. It's about the math." "This is it, the moment they told us about in high school when one day algebra would save our lives." Soon afterwards Val Kilmer solves their problem by using a little bit of geometry involving the mirror reflection of a picture.
Red Planet Mars (1952) IMDB *** While biting into a pie a boy has the idea to use the decimal expansion of π to communicate with aliens.
Revelation (2001) IMDB ** Isaac Newton appears in a brief scene, as an alchemist.
The Revenge of Doctor X (1970) IMDB ** Z-grade horror film about a NASA mathematician who really wants to be a botanist, and creates a venus flytrap man-monster.
Revolutionary Road (2008) IMDB ** John, a mentally disturbed mathematician, is a mirror for the two main characters. He talks about his shock therapy: "Supposed to jolt out the emotional problems. Just jolted out the mathematics." "How awful." "Why?"
Ringu (Ring) (1998) IMDB ** Ryuji is a mathematician who tries to save his ex-wife from a curse. Ryuji's girlfriend performs the Straw Dogs prank of switching a minus sign in his blackboard calculations.
The Road to Hong Kong (1962) IMDB *** A Bob Hope and Bing Crosby movie with a couple very funny math routines.
Rocketship X-M (1950) IMDB ** "A differential 6 over M to the 30th power, the half-way check result is 262 000 and 341 000, both using tangent 8. Correct?"
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead (1990) IMDB *** Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have a coin come up heads more than 157 times in a row. As they continue to toss the coin, they discuss what this means.
Roxanne (1987) IMDB * Daryl Hannah as Roxanne is an astronomer who discovers a "mathematical irregularity" of a comet's orbit.
The Rules of Attraction (2002) IMDB *** A very funny scene where a girl decides that wearing two condoms is 196% safe.
Rushmore (1998) IMDB *** The movie begins with a dream sequence in which a mathematical underachiever fantasises that he becomes the hero of the class, by solving a super difficult math problem. The problem they show is to calculate the area of an ellipse, which is quite routine.
The Saint (1997) IMDB * A nuclear chemist figures out the key to cold fusion. Napkins with the relevant equations appear in a few scenes.
Salem's Lot (TV) (1997) IMDB ** David Soul comes up with a vampire population model: "They're breeding on one another! Vampires are creating vampires. It's a geometric progression: 2 times 2 times 4 times 8." Luckily, David is better at staking than sequences.
Sarangni (Close to You) (2005) IMDB *** Strange movie. A math teacher gets involved with a student who reminds her of, or maybe is, a dead childhood friend. Some detailed math, including a long scene on getting the complex cube roots of 1.
The Santa Claus 3 (1906) IMDB * "Alright Class, if a reindeer leaves Ellsberg flying West at 20 miles per hour, and another reindeer flies East travelling at 50 miles per hour, how many hours does it take for them to be 210 miles apart.
The Saragossa Manuscript (Rekopis Znaleziony w Saragossie) (1965) IMDB ** Some noblemen are pondering the nature of infinity.
Schoolgirl Report 4 (Schulmädchen-Report 4) (1972) IMDB ** Some kids make out whilst the teacher goes on about Schiller. The binomial formula is on the blackboard in the background.
The School of Rock (2003) IMDB *** Jack Black is intent upon teaching his students rock music. When surprised by the principal, he improvises a very funny math song.
Sebastian (1968) IMDB ** A mathematician is in charge of a special codebreaking unit, consisting exclusively of beautiful young woman.
Secretos del Corazón (Secrets of the Heart) (1997) IMDB * A couple of arithemtic problems on a school blackboard.
El Seductor (1995) IMDB ** Cosme is a precocious high school student. It turns out he's also precocious at pursuing women. A little algebra when he's not thus occupied.
Sekret Enigmy (1979) IMDB ** Movie about the Polish contribution to breaking the Enigma code in WWII. Features a calculation of the astronomical number of different settings of the Enigma machine.
Serial Mom (1994) IMDB ** A math teacher is murdered by a homicidal mother.
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) IMDB ** Sherlock Holmes: "The only time Professor Moriarty really occupied the role of my nemesis was when it took him three weeks to make clear to me the mysteries of elementary calculus."
She Wrote the Book (1946) IMDB **** A woman math professor lectures about the radius of convergence of power series. In a very funny scene she discusses whether she likes bridges and applies (correctly!) the law of tangents.
Shrieker (1998) IMDB *** An incredibly bad horror movie, featuring a higher-dimensional monster and a math student hero, who fortuitously specializes in "multi-dimensional topography".
The Siege of Syracuse (L'Assedio di Siracusa) (1960) IMDB **** Archimedes as the hero in a sword and sandals flick?! The usual geometrical constructions, and the use of parabolic mirrors to burn Roman warships, and women's dresses.
Silent Star (1960) IMDB ** A mathematician is included on a trip to Venus. He helps decode Venusian messages, but is mostly there as cannon fodder.
Si Versailles M'Était Conté (1954) IMDB ** The mathematician Jean d'Alembert appears, but he has no speaking lines.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) IMDB ** Gwyneth Paltrow is spotted with the book Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Modern Philosophy.
Small Time Crooks (2000) IMDB *** Woody Allen weaves in some funny fractions when the not so bright bank robbers try to work out their shares of the loot.
Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997) IMDB ** Smilla: "The only thing that makes me truly happy is mathematics, snow, ice, numbers. To me the number system is like human life. First you have the natural numbers, the ones that are whole and positive like the numbers of a small child ..."
Sneakers (1992) IMDB ** A mathematician's codebreaking device becomes the inspiration for spy games.
Solid Geometry (2002) (TV) IMDB ***** A man reads his grandfather's work on "a plane without a surface", and applies it to make his unwanted girlfriend disappear.
Spaceways (1953) IMDB ** Features a female "higher" mathematician, who "has everything, including emotions, neatly reduced to equations and theorems."
The Spanish Prisoner (1997) IMDB *** Intrigue centered around a valuable industrial process. Bits and pieces of math as decoration: painting of Luca Pacioli, commuting diagram, multivariate calculus, etc.
Sphere (1998) IMDB ** Features a perfect sphere as the main focus of attention. Samuel L. Jackson plays a mathematician, and there's some nonsensical code breaking.
Spider-Man 2 (2004) IMDB *** Spiderman knows that Jacob Bernoulli found the curves of quickest descent. He also knows his eigenvalues.
Spider-Man 3 (2007) IMDB * A Hamiltonian and some matrices in a classroom physics scene.
St. Trinians (2007) IMDB *** "What is the volume of a sphere? Yes, Peaches, you got there first". "Quite loud". Apparently the correct answer is "pi R cubed".
Stand and Deliver (1988) IMDB ***** Great movie about the legendary math teacher Jaime Escalante, motivating his students in a poor school in East Los Angeles.
Stand-In (1937) IMDB **** Mathematician Attenbury Dodd does everything mathematically, including dancing, and knocking out a bully using the principle that "the straight line is the shortest distance between two points."
Star Trek (2009) IMDB ** Spock as a child learns some mathematics, including the volume of a sphere. Later, as an adult, he repeats his "eliminate the impossible" line from Star Trek VI.
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) IMDB * Spock: "An ancestor of mine maintained that if you eliminate the impossible whatever remains however improbable must be the truth."
Stargate (1994) IMDB ** An alien map uses constellations (in a not very convincing manner) to indicate coordinates in space.
Starship Troopers (1997) IMDB * The scores in a math final indicate who's going to be the pilots, and who's going to be cannon fodder.
The Story of Mankind (1957) IMDB *** An ageing but still funny Harpo Marx plays Isaac Newton, getting hit on the head with apples.
Strangers on a Train (1951) IMDB *** Hitchcock movie, which includes a very funny scene with a drunk mathematician discussing calculus.
Straw Dogs (1971) IMDB *** Dustin Hoffmann as a mathematician driven to extremes to defend his house. He also counts to 100 in binary and there are some good calculus blackboards: his wife amuses herself by switching a minus sign in his calculations.
Strike it Rich (1990) IMDB *** Bertram is a low-level accountant and an amateur mathematician, who is smitten by Molly Ringwald: "In my dream, I'd dared to ask her out ... the only glamour in my life was the dance of numbers". His math isn't so hot when he later tries to guess Molly's phone number: "Do you realize there are 30 permutations of the numbers 4, 0 and 8, with a random double?" Actually, there are 36 such permutations.
Succubus (Necronomicon - Geträumte Sünden) (1968) IMDB *** Bizarre scene in which someone is playing the piano from a geometry book whilst a woman is taking off her clothes.
Summer Night Fever (1978) IMDB * Features a sexy math teacher. No math.
A Summer's Tale (Conte d'Été) (1996) IMDB ** One of the main characters is doing a masters in math.
Superman III (1983) IMDB * A computer scientist figures out how to skim money from his company by rounding down their checks and pocketing the fractions of a cent.
Super Mario Bros. (1993) IMDB ** A lizard-man exits an evolution machine. He promptly, and incorrectly, declares that the square root of 26 481 is 191.
Supernova (2000) IMDB *** The crew of a spaceship come across a bomb made from higher-dimensional matter. Very nice graphics (correct up to a certain point), which show how to build 2-D projections of higher-dimensional cubes.
Suspect X (Yôgisha X No Kenshin) (2008) IMDB **** A terrific battle of wits between a physicist-detective and a mathematician-suspect. "But his specialty is math, not homicide." "Yes, but homicide would prove an easier challenge." Lots of math and mathematical metaphors. A stunning scene in a prison cell involving the four color theorem.
Suspicion (1941) IMDB ** Calculation that winning a 200 pounds bet at 10:1 is 2000 pounds.
Swimming With Sharks (1994) IMDB * Passing reference to the antihero playing a zero sum game.
Swing Girls (2004) IMDB ** It turns out that Ozawa, the straightlaced and lifeless math teacher, is crazy about jazz (and an awful saxophonist). One math scene, calculcating areas cut off by straight lines.
Team America: World Police (2004) IMDB *** Very funny running joke, starting with a terrorist plot which will be "Nine eleven times a hundred". "Jesus, that's..." "Yes. Ninety-one thousand one hundred."
Teresa's Tattoo (1994) IMDB *** Teresa is doing a PhD in applied math and does not have much luck in communicating to others what she does. Some funny scenes.
That's Adequate (1989) IMDB *** Crazy scene, featuring Einstein as a young pirate discovering E=mc2 whilst watching a volcano erupt.
Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001) IMDB ** Math professor teaching basic laws of motion.
This is Spinal Tap (1984) IMDB *** Hilarious scene in which a rock star explains why it is important to have amplifiers that go up to 11 instead of just 10. Another scene where confusion between feet (') and inches (") results in the building of a miniscule Stonehenge.
Thru the Moebius Strip (2005) IMDB *** Jack prepares to go through the Moebius field portal, to find his father Simon Weir, 27.2 light years away. Arthur the robot is asked to simply explain the portal: "When a three−dimensional cylindrical loop is given a 180 degree twist, it becomes a two−dimensional mathematical oddity known as a Moebius strip. By twisting two of the existing parameters of space, Professor Weir was able to manipulate the third parameter, which is distance ..." "You call that simply?".
Time Machine (2002) IMDB ** An absolutely humongous wall covered with blackboards.
Tin Man (2007) IMDB ** In the final episode of this miniseries, the scarecrow Glitch ponders his lack of brains: "You know, when I had a brain, I was twice as scared as I am now with only half a brain. Which means that, if I had no brain at all, I would be four times braver than I was when I was brainy."
Titanic (1997) IMDB * Rose figures out that there are not enough life boats on the Titanic to accommodate everybody. After the Titanic hits the iceberg, Mr. Andrews states that it is a mathematical certainty that the Titanic will sink.
To Sir, with Love (1967) IMDB * Miscellaneous bits and pieces of simple math in classroom scene.
Tom & Viv (1994) IMDB *** Bertrand Russel is one of the characters. Viv, T.S. Elliot's wife, solves a few nice mathematical brainteasers.
Top of the Form (1953) IMDB ** "Professor" Fortescue is a racetrack tout, claiming to be "senior wrangler" of Oxford. He hides out at a boy's school, where a blackboard indicates he teaches (x+1)/(x+2) = (x+1)/x + (x+1)/2.
Torchy Gets Her Man (1938) IMDB *** Gahagan has a mathematical scheme for betting on the horses: "I make my mind go blank until a number pops into it. Then I multiply the number by the same number, and the last number of the result is the horse I plunk it on". He uses his system to pick horse 7 (because 6 x 6 = 37), then 4 (4 x 4 = 14), then 9 (9 x 9 = 99), then 7 (7 x 7 = 47), then 8 (8 x 8 = 68). He wins.
Torn Curtain (1966) IMDB *** Hitchcock movie in which Paul Newman plays an American scientist supposedly defecting to the East. Great scene where the mathematical theories are competing. Lots of calculations on blackboards, and the symbol π used as a secret sign.
Twilight (2008) IMDB ** Bella is trying to figure out Edward the vampire: "You gotta give me some answers." "Yes... No... To get to the other side... 1.77245..." "I don't want to know what the square root of Pi is." "You knew that?"
Véronique et Son Cancre (Veronique and Her Dunce) (1958) IMDB *** In this Rohmer short, Veronique tutors a supposed dunce. She teaches him about division by fractions, but his questioning makes clear to her that she also doesn't really understand what's going on.
Village of the Damned (1960) IMDB * Creepy blond children learn very quickly, including a scene with some relativity equations.
The Virgin Suicides (1999) IMDB *** Teacher in action teaching Venn diagrams. One of the blackboards is adorned with a messed-up decimal expansion of π. In a another scene we see a blackboard with problems relating to finding the derivative of a quadratic function.
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) IMDB * Minor references to math in a scientific dispute about how to save the Earth.
Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968) IMDB ** Space expedition includes a mathematician. Various bits of mathematical rambling and smalltalk.
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965) IMDB ** Earlier version of the previous movie.
A Walk to Remember (2002) IMDB *** "Which of these are similar triangles? This one or that one, huh? Whaddya think?" "Man, I think this is bullshit!" " ... That makes two of us." Later, we see isoceles and similar triangles on a basketball court.
Wall Street (1987) IMDB * One-liner: "It's a zero-sum game, somebody wins and somebody loses".
Waterboys (2001) IMDB *** Some schoolboys take up synchronized swimming. One is a math wiz who uses geometric diagrams to plan one of their routines.
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) IMDB *** Some funny scenes involving percentages. One has a teacher uses Wonka Bars to teach percentages. Another has a total of 105%. A computer is programmed to find golden tickets based on "computonian law of probability".
Wish Upon a Star (1996) IMDB *** Several funny classroom scenes. One "worked" problem: A cleaning solution is made up of three chemicals. A, B, and C (Haley writes A, B, and C on the blackboard) So far so good. There are equal amounts of A and B and four times as much C as there is A. What percentage of the bottle is full of C?
Witness (1985) IMDB ** Harrison Ford sings along to Sam Cooke's famous song: "Don't know much geography, Don't know much trigonometry, Don't know much about algebra Don't know what a slide rule is for. But I know that one and one is two, And if this one could be with you What a wonderful this would be"
Wittgenstein (1993) IMDB ** Bertrand Russell appears. No explicit math or logic, but we do see Russell at the barber, a sly reference to the liar paradox.
The Wizard of Oz (1939) IMDB *** The scarecrow proves to himself (but nobody else) that he's got a brain by trying to recite Pythagoras's theorem: "The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side."
The World is Not Enough (1999) IMDB *** A bomb is travelling through at 70 miles per hour, and is 106 miles from its target. James Bond immediately pronounces that they have 78 minutes. In fact, they have 91 minutes.
Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) IMDB ** Sweet 1-liner about the breaking up of a vaudeville group: 1 from 4 leaving nothing.
Young Einstein (1988) IMDB *** Quirky comedy where Albert Einstein grows up on an apple farm in Tasmania and rediscovers Newton's theories. He later moves to a great city, falls in love with Marie Curie and discovers everything else that the (real) Albert Einstein is famous for.
You're the One (Una Historia de Entonces) (2000) IMDB *** In one scene a boy is trying to memorize the following facts about polyhedra by reading them out loud a number of times (with slight variations): "Bodies which have plane faces are called polyhedrons. The polyhedrons which have equal faces and angles are called regular, and there are five of them: The tetrahedron, the octahedron, the icosahedron, the hexahedron or cube, and the dodecahedron. This is really hard. It's easy to remember the tetrahedron. Because of 'tit' ".
Yours, Mine and Ours (2005) IMDB ** A man with 8 children marries a woman with 10 children: "Party of Five, times three, plus My Three Sons".
The A-Team Ep 1.7: The Rabbit Who Ate Las Vegas (1983) IMDB ** A mathematician figures out a system to win at gambling, using "the infinity concept of declining numbers".
ABBA : When I Kissed the Teacher (1976) (Music Video) *** A music video featuring a math teacher and geometric formulas on a blackboard.
The Abbott and Costello Show Ep 1.2: The Dentist's Office (1952) IMDB *** Bud asks Lou a puzzle, where Lou is 40 years old, in love with a little girl who is 10 years old. So, Lou is four times as old as the girl, and in 5 years, he'll be three times as old as the girl (45 and 15). In a further 15 years, he'll be twice as old the girl (60 and 30): "Hey, she's catching up!" "Yes! How long do you have to wait before you and the little girl are the same age?"
The Abbott and Costello Show Ep 1.8: The Army Story (1953) IMDB ***** Abbott and Costello perform an excellent version of their 7 x 13 = 28 routine.
The Abbott and Costello Show Ep 1.19: Bingo (1953) IMDB *** Very funny bit where a vendor gives Costello two bananas and tries to convince him it's three: "That's a-one banana ain't she? [shows Costello one banana]. That's a-two banana? [shows him two bananas]. One banana, two banana, that's a-three banana".
The Abbott and Costello Show Ep 2.26: Barber Lou (1954) IMDB *** Very strange scene, where a cop gives Costello a speeding ticket. "How many people you got in this car?" "Seven." "How many in the front seat?" "Three." "How many in the back seat?" "One." "... How much is three and one?" "That's a hard one, ain't it?" "No it's not a hard one!". "Well, that's seven ain't it?" "No it's not seven! Now how many in the car?", and they go around again.
All in the Family Ep 4.23: Pay the Twenty Dollars (1974) IMDB *** Archie has accidentally given Jefferson a phony twenty dollar bill, with hilariously tangles as they try to resolve it. Best exchange: Jefferson: "I checked these serial numbers against our list. This is 8, 9, 1, 7, 0, 4, 1, 2. These are counterfeit serial numbers." Edith: "They sound like real numbers to me!"
Battlestar Galactica Ep 4.20: Daybreak Part 2 (2009) IMDB ** In the last scene (the angel) Caprica waxes philosophical:"Mathematics, law of averages. Let a complex system repeat itself long enough and eventually something surprising may occur. That, too, is in God's plan."
The Benny Hill Show − The Crazy World of Benny Hill (1988) IMDB ** A young child has to work out 3+2 on a slate, and Benny gives a hint by holding up his hand. She responds by drawing a picture of his hand.
The Big Bang Theory (2007 &rarr ) IMDB *** Comedy about some science nerds. Mostly physics jokes, but some good math ones as well.
The Big Bang Theory Ep 1.1: Pilot (2007) IMDB *** "There's some poor women who's gonna pin her hopes on my sperm. What if she winds up with a toddler who doesn't know if he should use an integral or a differential to solve for the area under a curve?" "I'm sure she'll still love him." "I wouldn't."
The Big Bang Theory Ep 2.1: The Bad Fish Paradigm (2008) IMDB *** "Maybe we should slow things down a little ...". "No I didn't mean to go into your apartment to go fast." No, I know. I know what you meant. It's just, this is only our first date." Yeah o.k. sure, no problem. Why don't we just figure out where we're going, and when we want to get there, and then rate of speed equals distance over time... Solve for R ..."
The Big Bang Theory Ep 2.8: The Lizard-Spock Expansion (2008) IMDB ** "Oh, look, Saturn 3 is on." "I don't want to watch Saturn 3. Deep Space Nine is better." "How is Deep Space Nine better than Saturn 3?" "Simple subtraction will tell you it's six better." "Compromise. Watch Babylon 5." "In what sense is that a compromise?" "Well, five is part way between three... never mind."
The Big Bang Theory Ep 2.9: The White Asparagus Triangulation (2008) IMDB *** "More to the point, it's about finding a way to keep Leonard and Stephanie together." "Oh, I don't think you can." "Why not?" "Look at Leonard's record! 27 days with Joyce Kim." ("During which she defected to North Korea.") "Two booty calls with Leslie Winkle." ("For which she awarded him the nickname 'Speed of Light Leonard'.") "And the three hour dinner with Penny." ("Which would have been two and a half if they ordered the soufflé when they sat down.") "Based on the geometric progression, his relationship with Stephanie should have ended after 20 minutes." "Yes, I'm aware of the math. Y equals 27 days over 12 to the N'th. The issue remains."
The Big Bang Theory Ep 2.13: The Friendship Algorithm (2009) IMDB *** Sheldon is rockclimbing, and freezes. "You alright there, Cooper?" "Not really. I feel somewhat like an inverse tangent function that's approaching an asymptote." "Are you saying you're stuck?" "What part of an inverse tangent function approaching an asymptote did you not understand?"
The Big Bang Theory Ep 2.15: The Maternal Capacitance (2009) IMDB *** Sheldon connects with Leonard's mother. "What are the odds that two individuals as unique as ourselves would be connected by someone as comparatively workaday as your son?" "Is that a rhetorical point or would you like to do the math?" "I'd like to do the math." "I'd like that, too."
The Big Bang Theory Ep 2.16: The Cushion Saturation (2009) IMDB *** Sheldon is upset that Penny is in his spot on the couch. "That is my spot. In an ever-changing world, it is a single point of consistency. If my life were expressed as a function on a four dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, that spot at the moment I first sat on it would be zero zero zero zero." "What?" "Don't sit in his spot."
The Big Bang Theory Ep 2.20: The Hofstadter Isotope (2009) IMDB *** "Come on, Howard. The odds of us picking up girls in a bar are practically zero." "Oh, Really? Are you familiar the Drake equation?" "The one that estimates the odds of making contact with extraterrestrials by calculating the product of an increasingly restricted series of fractional values such as those stars with planets and those planets likely to develop life N equals R times Fp times Ne times Fl times Fi times Fc times L?" "... Yeah. That one ... You can modify it to calculate our chances of having sex, by changing the formula to use the number of single women in Los Angeles, the number of those who might find us attractive, and what I call the Wolowitz coefficient." "The Wolowitz coefficient?" "Neediness times dress size squared. Crunching the numbers, I come up with a conservative 5812 potential sex partners within a 40 mile radius." "You're joking." "I'm a horny engineer, Leonard. I never joke about math or sex."
Blackadder II &minus Head (1986) IMDB **** Blackadder: "Right Baldrick, let's try again. This is called adding. If I have two beans and then I add two more beans, what do I have?" Baldrick: "Some beans." Blackadder: "Yes ... and no. Let's try again, shall we? I have two beans, then I add two more beans what does that make?" Baldrick: "A very small casserole." Blackadder: "Baldrick, the ape creature of the Indus have mastered this. Now, try again. One, two, three, four! So how many are there?" Baldrick: "Three." Blackadder: "What?" Baldrick: (Pointing) "And that one." Blackadder: (Picking it up) "Three and that one. So if I add that one to the three what will I have?" Baldrick: "Ah! Some beans."
Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo − Ep 1.64: Geometry 101 - Painful, Perplexing and Pungent Polygons! (2005) IMDB *** Crazy episode of a crazy series, where all the animated characters turn in to polygons: "Yoru days of roundness are over!" Lots of polypuns.
Bogan Pride − Ep 1.3: The Maths Olympiad (2008) IMDB **** Boonelg High School competes in the regional championships. "Your lovelife is like the square root of negative 1". "???" "Imaginary!".The Maths Olympiad song has to be seen to be believed.
Bromwell High − Ep 1.2: Police Story (2005) IMDB *** Martin the maths teacher accidentally draws an incredibly dirty Venn diagram.
Bromwell High − Ep 1.4: No More Teachers (2005) IMDB *** "Maths is as easy as 1, 2, 7". Later, a monkey takes over teaching of the math class; the union objects because the standards have improved.
Bromwell High − Ep 1.7: Goodbye Mr. Crisps (2005) IMDB *** Bromwell High can't afford whiteboard markers, so Martin does an imaginary sum on the whiteboard. "Then, uh, we can multiply these two factors here to, uh, produce a solution where Y equals ... 5? Yes, Y equals 5." "I don't think that sum is right, sir." "Ah! But how can you tell? Because it's invisible." "You forgot to carry the one." "What? [he checks his work] ... Fuck!"
Bromwell High − Ep 1.12: Drama Queen (2005) IMDB *** There's a fight over what to do with some extra money which has come to the school. "What about maths?" "Oh, no one cares about maths, Martin, you little shit." "You're just saying that because of the trial separation." "No, she's quite right. No one does care about maths, Martin, you little shit."
Buffy the Vampire Slayer − Ep 1.9: The Puppet Show (1997) IMDB ** Willow discusses a brain-hunting demon with Xander. "What could a demon possibly want from me?" "What's the square root of 841?" "29 ... Oh, yeah."
Buffy the Vampire Slayer − Ep 3.16: Doppelganglang (1999) IMDB ** Anya weeps for her fate as an ex-demon: "For a thousand years I wielded the powers of the wish. I brought ruin to the heads of unfaithful men. I brought forth destruction and chaos for the pleasure of the lower beings. I was feared and worshipped across the mortal globe. And now I'm stuck at Sunnydale High. Mortal. A child. And I'm flunking math!"
Buffy the Vampire Slayer − Ep 5.19: Tough Love (2001) IMDB *** "We were acting out a geometry problem ... so we made a triangle with our bodies, and that's when I called Xander obtuse, and he got really grumpy. And then Dawn said we were a cute triangle and, well, hilarity ensued."
City Homicide − Ep 3.11: Hot House (2009) IMDB **** A mathematics professor and another get killed, with equations written all over their bodies: we wrote the equations! Your humble movie collectors acted as consultants on the epsiode, and we put in as much good math as we could. Lots of Riemann Zeta functions on the professor's whiteboards (and body), and beautiful math of all kinds on the boards of the professor's student. Burkard's clay paraboloid is the "blunt object" used to stun one of the victims, and the QEDcat even makes an appearance!
The Colgate Comedy Hour − Ep 2.36 (1952) The Colgate Comedy Hour − Ep 2.36 (1952) IMDB **** Abbott and Costello reprise their famous routine where Costello proves that 7 x 13 = 28. More hammy, and a bit tired, but still very funny.
Columbo − Ep 6.3 (1977) The Bye-Bye Sky High I.Q. Murder Case IMDB *** A crappy episode of one of our favorite programs. The victim and murderer are members of a Mensa-like club for people with high I.Q.'s. The murderer sets Columbo a puzzle: In a room, are several sacks of gold pieces, as many sacks as you like. Each sack contains several of these gold pieces, again, as many as you like. One sack, however, is full of artificial gold pieces, and they weigh differently. Now, the solid gold pieces weigh let's say, a pound each. And the artificial pieces weigh whatever you like, say a pound and an ounce each. You have a scale to calculate just one weight. Which sack has the artificial gold pieces? Needless to say, Columbo solves the puzzle.
The Comedy Company (1988) IMDB *** Kylie Mole discusses her love of maths. "... we just hate doing stupid subjects like maths and that, 'cause maths is so spac. 'cause, um, aw fair dinkum, you know like Venn diagrams and that? You know oh whoopy doo oh through a party, you know? Where uh where uh um real that's really knowin' about, that's really gonna help you get guys an' that, you know? You know, and real and unreal numbers, you know? Oh great, you know, 'That's a really unreal number'. Far out, you know. 'I'm so so spaced out, Man.' Ehw! So stupid! Everyone hates maths. Except Amanda. She goes, 'Oh, Excellent! Maths! Ehw!" Just to spite me. So, when Sir wasn't looking I went I went, I just stuck my compass in her. So good!"
"And um, then Sir went, "Um, if you had twenty-five apples on your desk and um I took a fifth what would you have?' and Deano goes 'A punch up!'. And Sir goes 'That's enough' and then he went 'Alright, if you had two balls and you took away 100% of them, what would you have?' And um Johnno goes 'A maths teacher' ... And um then he goes 'Now if you had a five dollar note and asked your father for another five dollar note, how much would you have?' and Deano goes 'Sir! Sir! A five dollar note." And Sir goes, 'Deano, you don't know your arithemtic.' And Deano goes,'You don't know my Dad.' "
The Cosby Show − Ep 2.12: Mrs. Westlake (1986) IMDB ** Theo's "dragon lady" math teacher asks to meet Theo's parents. It turns out the dragon lady is incredibly hot. A bit of fun with whether Theo's test score is 89 or 68.
Doctor Who − Ep 5.1 - 5.4: The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967) IMDB IMDB IMDB IMDB *** The Cybermen set a careful puzzle-trap, so that only an excellent logician will unfreeze them. The foolish Klieg obliges. Lots of logical and mathematical mumbo jumbo: "If you take the sum of the integrats and express the result as a power series, then the indices show the basic binary blocks".
Doctor Who − Ep 6.6 - 6.10: The Mind Robber (1968) IMDB IMDB IMDB IMDB IMDB ** " For twenty-five years, I delivered five thousand words every week." "Well that's over half a million words!" True: it's six million over.
Doctor Who − Ep 8.11 - 8.14: The Claws of Axos (1971) IMDB IMDB IMDB IMDB *** The Axons are looking to travel in time, demand equations from Doctor Who, and accuse him of lying: "Pure mathematics cannot lie!" The Doctor also uses arithmetic questions to stop the Axons getting inside Jo's head. "What is three 7's", "21", "times 4", "84", "minus 35", " ... 49", "twice that", " ... 88" (sic!), "plus 10", "108", "divide by 9", "12", "divide by 4", "3", "three 7's" ...
Doctor Who − Ep 13.9 - 13.12: Pyramids of Mars (1975) IMDB IMDB IMDB IMDB ** Doctor Who quickly solves the Liar Puzzle. And he does some quick (and weird) arithemtic: "120.3 centimeters, multiplied by the binary figure ten zero zero. That's 162.4 centimeters, correct?" "Show off!".
Doctor Who − Ep 18.25 - 18.28: Logopolis (1981) IMDB IMDB IMDB IMDB *** Logopolis is a world populated by mathematicians. They perform a sort of mental/manual mathematics that influences physical matter.
Doctor Who − Ep 19.19 - 19.22: Earthshock (1982) IMDB IMDB IMDB IMDB ** "Tell me, what is the square root of 3.69873" "About 1.92321" (Astonished at the speed) "That's not possible!" "Oh, he's very good".
Doctor Who: The Five Doctors (1983) IMDB ** Dr Who figures out that the key to crossing a deadly chessboard lies in the digits of π.
Doctor Who − Ep 21.21 - 21.24: The Twin Dilemma (1984) IMDB IMDB IMDB IMDB ** Romulus and Remus are mathematically brilliant twins. They are playing a game of equations when they are abducted by Mestor, who wants to use their abilities to move some planets.
Doctor Who − Ep 25.8 - 25.10: Silver Nemesis (1988) IMDB IMDB IMDB ** A mathematician in 1638 calculates the period of a comet, which is scheduled to crash into the Earth in 1988.
Doctor Who 2005 − Ep 3.7: 42 (2007) IMDB *** To get through the door security during an emergency, they have to type the next number in the sequence: 313, 331, 367. Doctor Who immediately realizes the answer is 379; "It's a sequence of happy primes ... Any number that reduces to 1 when you take the sum of the square of its digits and continue iterating until it yields 1 is a happy number... A happy prime is a number that is both happy and prime. Now type it in! I dunno, talk about dumbing down. Don't they teach recreational mathematics anymore?".
Doctor Who 2005 − Ep 4.10: Midnight (2008) IMDB *** Sky is taken over by some intelligence, immediately repeating whatever anyone else says. The Doctor tests her accuracy, with Sky repeating a half a second behind him: "The square root of pi is 1.772453850905516027298167483341 wow".
Der Elefant - Mord Verjährt Nie − Ep 1.2: Liebesbrief eines Toten (2004) IMDB *** A math student was murdered 20 years ago, and a fellow student, now professor, is a suspect. One of the detectives apparently understands the math: "The arithmetic mean of omega plus 1.23 to the power of phi equals the limit of the inverse function lambda and the square root of k, whereby k must be a constant. Simple." "Sure. For someone who never had any friends in school."
Eleventh Hour − Ep 3: Kryptos (2006) IMDB ** A brilliant meteorologist uses the Fibonacci numbers to model climate change.
Eureka (2006 &rarr ) IMDB ** Quirky series about a town populated by brilliant scientists and their families. A bit of humorous math around the edges: blackboards with PDEs, putting up a streetlight at the corner of Main and Archimedes, etc. The credits show some children working out ODEs and matrix eigenvalue problems.
Eureka − Ep 1.7: Blink (2006) IMDB *** Two ditzy-looking cheerleaders are chatty as they walk to class: "... which basically means certain nonlinear dynamical systems, etxremely sensitive to initial conditions ..." "exhibits a phenomenon known as chaos. Come on Courtney, that's a textbook definition. You gotta take specific evaluation ..."
Eureka − Ep 3.10: Your Face or Mine (2009) IMDB ** Zoe is doing her homework, and Jo and SARAH (the house) are no help: "So, if you differentiate the cross product of r and p, with respect to time, that should equal zero, right?" "Can't SARAH help you?" "I'm sorry. I'm not programmed to cheat."
Eureka − Ep 3.11: Insane in the P-Brane (2009) IMDB *** Sherriff Carter is stuck in the fifth dimension with a couple bickering scientists. "Why do you have such a problem with me?" "The whole scientific community has a problem with you." "Oh, why? Because I disproved Cook and Moore's half-baked theory about fractals not needing a Hausdorff dimension greater than their topological one?"
Eureka − Ep 3.14: Ship Happens (2009) IMDB ** Kim returns as a clone, the remains of a spaceship computer. She downloads her information by writing equations all over the walls of her room.
Everybody Hates Chris − Ep 1.2: Everybody Hates Keisha (2005) IMDB ** Chris tries to help Drew with his math, but Drew is distracted by the lacing of his shoes. "So, you move the decimal point over two places." "Hey which one you like better? The spiderweb, or the stepladder?"
Everybody Hates Chris − Ep 1.16: Everybody Hates the Gout (2006) IMDB *** Very funny episode where Chris gets an F in math. "The only place Martin Luther King didn't work was in math." "Chris, what's the square root of 144?" "... 1963? The same year that Martin Luther King led the march on Washington?"
Everybody Hates Chris − Ep 2.21: Everybody Hates Math (2007) IMDB *** Chris tries to learn algebra, with some questionable help from Rochelle. The funniest scene is a deleted scene, a flashback of Doc as a child being quizzed by his white teacher: "Doc, what's the square root of 46 562?" "215.7823." "Very good! Now can you mop the bathroom?"
Everybody Loves Raymond − Ep 9.5: Ally's F (2004) IMDB *** Ray and Debra go to see Ally's math teacher. He is unsympathetic: "The thing about math is, numbers are constant, they're clear. They're ... logical, they're organized. Thirteen year olds are ... not. ... Their home lives and their love lives and their social lives, are not my problem. That is my problem, and the answer is pi!" Ray sums him up: "If X equals lame, that guy is four times X".
Family Guy − Ep 2.14: Let's Go to the Hop (2000) IMDB *** Flashback to a pilgrim correctly reciting the quadratic formula. She is praised; then, being a girl who can answer math problems, she is declared a witch.
Family Guy − Ep 3.3: Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington (2001) IMDB *** Peter imagines his kids learning math on the street: "Louis left his house at 2:15, and has to travel the distance of 6.2 miles at the rate of five miles per hour. What time will Louis arrive?" "Depends if he stops to see his ho". "That's what we call a variable". Later, a senator proposes fining the El Dorado Tobacco Company infinity billion dollars; another senator suggests that fining them a real number would be more effective.
Family Guy − Ep 3.22: When You Wish Upon a Weinstein (2003) IMDB *** Fantasy scene demonstrating Chris's need to learn math to function in the real world, getting directions at a gas station: "OK, now whatcha gotta is go down the road, past the old Johnson place, and you're gonna find two roads, one parallel and one perpendicular. Now keep going until you come to a highway that bisects it at a 45 degree angle. Solve for X."
FlashForward; Ep 1.2: (2009) IMDB ** The FBI ponders why everyone on the planet blacked out at exactly 11 am (Pacific time). "There are 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute, so the chances of something happening at exactly the top of any hour are 1 in 3600". Well, sort of.
The Flip Wilson Show − Ep 3.4: (1972) IMDB **** Flip Wilson and Michael Jackson perform Abbott and Costello's famous 7 x 13 = 28 scene, with Wilson doing Abbott's bit, and Jackson Costello's. They do a very good job of it!
Freaks and Geeks − Ep 1.11: Looks and Books (2000) IMDB *** After a long absence, Lindsay rejoins the mathletes. In the World's longest blooper, every answer in the resulting competition is wrong, but is treated as correct: the hour hand of a clock moves 0.4 radians in 48 minutes; a rhombus with long diagonal 10 and large angle 100 degrees has area 42; if arcsin x = 2 arccos x then x = 0.9; the inscribed sphere of a cube has 0.52 the volume of the cube.
Fringe (2008 &rarr ) IMDB ** Some occasional math, usually associated with Walter, the resident mad scientist. The sine rule and a couple Taylor-like formulas go zipping by in the opening credits.
Fringe − Ep 1.2: Same Old Story (2008) IMDB *** The combination lock to Walter's garage is 31, 41, 59. At the end of the episode, Walter tries to lull himself to sleep by reciting the Fibonacci numbers: intentionally or otherwise, he misses 5. He then starts naming apparently random Fibonacci numbers: 1, 233, 377, 2, 21, 610.
Fringe − Ep 1.8: The Equation (2008) IMDB ** An unsolved equation is the key to abductions.
Furuhata Ninzaburõ: Ep 1.13 Murder of Mathematician (1995) IMDB ***** The Columbo-like Furuhata introduces the epsiode with a fingerman trick for calculating 7x8. In the epsiode proper, two mathematicians receive the prestigious Australian Arbuckle award (for mathematicians under 40), for their work on dynamical systems in 4-dimensional manifolds. When one is killed, Furuhata solves the mystery: the other mathematician has killed him to take credit for the solution of Fermat's last theorem. Throughout the episode, Furuhata and the murderer play a simple Nim-like game: Furuhata shows his mastery at the end by winning, and by describing the mod 4 calculation to do so.
Futurama (1999 − 2008) IMDB ***** Lots of very funny math in the background. Everything about math in Futurama can be found in the math section of the amazing site La indoblable pagina de Bender bending Rodriguez.
Futurama − Ep 2.11: The Lesser of Two Evils (2000) *** IMDB The robots Bender and Flexo share a laugh over their serial numbers, that both are expressible as the sum of two cubes: 3370318 = 1193+1193 and 2716057 = 9523+ (-951)3.
Futurama − Ep 3.14: Time Keeps on Slipping (2001) *** IMDB Professor Farnworth is unimpressed with The Harlem Globetrotters' mathematical expertise. "No wonder we failed to stop the time skips: diverting chronotons is mathematically impossible. I knew I should have checked your showboating Globetrotter algebra".
Futurama − Ep 5.10: The Farnsworth Parabox (2003) **** IMDB Terrific episode in which Professor Farnsworth invents a box containing a parallel universe. And, the parallel universe contains a box containing the first universe.
Futurama: Bender's Big Score (2007) IMDB *** The Harlem Globetrotters use their "razzle-dazzle globetrotter calculus" (variation of parameters and expansion of the Wronskian) to prove the possiblity of paradox-free time travel: "Man, that cube root was a real buzzer beater, Clyde".
Futurama: The Beast With a Billion Backs (2008) IMDB *** Very funny Flatland scene in the 2D Tunnel of Love: "Wow! You even look beautiful in 2D." "I do? But from your perspective I'm just a line segment." "A really hot line segment!" Dr. Wernstrom makes fun of Professor Farnsworth for only having one Fields medal. Later, in Heaven, the two collaborate and find "another" elementary proof of the Goldbach Conjecture.
Futurama: Bender's Game (2008) IMDB ** Mom controls the Earth's energy, dark matter in the form of an icosahedral crystal. To defeat her, the dark matter must come in contact with the antibackwards crystal, in the form of a dodecahedron. There's also a very funny scene with a boomerang coming back Pacman style.
Gokusen (2002 &rarr 2008) IMDB IMDB ** Kumiko is a cute and ditzy math teacher by day, and the heir to a Yakuza clan by night. Not much math. A very funny scene in Episode 11, when a preening Kumiko teaches quadratics, while being photographed for a magazine.
Gokusen (2004) IMDB ** Anime version. Still not much math. In Episode 3 Kumiko gets pissed when a dumb Yakuza member tells her that arithmetic and mathematics are the same thing.
Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius − Ep 2.7: Return of the Nanobots (2004) IMDB *** Similar to the Star Trek episode Wolf in the Fold. Jimmy Neutron stops the nanobots from zapping people by getting them to calculate the exact value of π.
Kim Possible − Ep 4.11: Odds Man In (2007) *** IMDB After taking her to a thrilling evening at the Actuary of the Year Awards, Ron becomes obsessed with calculating the risks during Kim's crimefighting.
Kim Possible − Ep 4.14: Mathter and Fervent (2007) *** IMDB Kim and Ron fight The Mathter, who seeks revenge after being denied funding for his "unethical mathematical experiments". The climax is a fight in the Infinity Dome, between The Mathter and Ron's actuarial father.
Kyle XY − Ep 1.5: This Is Not a Test (2006) IMDB *** Kyle is a brilliant teenager who appears out of nowhere. On his first day at school, he solves the "Everest" challenge problem on a junior class blackboard: a Neumann problem for the wave equation on a disk.
Help − Ep 1.5 (2005) **** IMDB Hilarious scene of a mathematician trying to explain Fermat's last theorem to his clueless psychiatrist.
House − Ep 4.15: House's Head (2008) ** IMDB House is being examined after being in a bus accident. "Did you just forget his name?" "No! Lesbian, find out if anybody on that bus was taken to other hospitals." "He just forgot mine." "No, '13'. I just wanted to call you a lesbian." "I'm not a lesbian". "I was rounding up, from 50%."
The Magic of David Copperfield XIII: Mystery on the Orient Express (1991) IMDB ***** The part of this show in which DC invites the TV audience to participate is based on an ingenious trick involving odd and even numbers.
The Magic of David Copperfield XIV: Flying - Live the Dream (1992) IMDB ***** The part of this show in which DC invites the TV audience to participate is a variation of the Nine Mystery explained in Martin Gardner's book Mathematics, Magic and Mystery.
The Magic of David Copperfield XVI: Unexplained Forces (1995) IMDB ***** The clock illusion, the part of this show in which DC invites the TV audience to participate, is based on math.
Majo No Joken (Forbidden Love) (1999) IMDB ** A math teacher and her student fall in love. A number of math scenes, on coordinate geometry and quadratics and the like.
Malcolm in the Middle − Ep 1.8: Krelboyne Picnic (2000) IMDB *** The Krelboyne class are the entertainment at a picnic. Malcolm performs some impressive mental arithmetic, but the other acts are less gripping. "Our next act needs no introduction, having been the buzz of last year's math fair. Please welcome Flora Mayesh, and Fermat's Last Theorem!! ... hello, is this, testing ..."
Mr. Bean − Ep 1.1: Mr. Bean (1990) IMDB ** Mr. Bean's first ever skit. He flails helplessly in a math exam full of calculus, having instead practised trigonometry. With two minutes to go, he discovers the alternative trigonometry exam.
Mr. Bean − Ep 1.13: Good Night, Mr. Bean (1995) IMDB *** To get to sleep Mr. Bean counts sheep in a picture. Losing patience, he uses a calculator to count them as 27x15, and immediately drops off.
Northern Exposure − Ep 4.3: Nothing's Perfect (1992) IMDB **** Amy is working on her doctorate, on π. A mixture of nonsensical math talk and some deliberately funny math scenes.
Numb3rs (1995 &rarr ) IMDB ***** Too much math to mention: a project in itself. Wolfram's Numb3rs website is a good place to start.
The Office − Ep 5.9: The Surplus (2008) IMDB *** Michael asks that "surplus" be explained to him as if he's a six year old. Then he goes for the five year old version.
Outer Limits − Ep 2.3: Behold Eck! (1964) IMDB **** In this great episode, a two-dimensional alien gets stranded on Earth, walks through walls (sideways!) and slices through buildings.
Petticoat Junction − Ep 4.28: That Was the Night That Was (1967) IMDB ** An "alien" comes to Petticoat Junction and introduces himself as Dr. Isaac Newton. "Isaac Newton?!" "Something wrong?" "No, no. It's just that Isaac Newton is a well-known name." "Yeah, he was a pretty famous baseball player."
The Return of Sherlock Holmes − Ep 1.3: The Musgrave Ritual (1986) IMDB *** As part of a treasure hunt Sherlock Holmes has to dermine the length of the shadow of an elm tree that has been chopped down. He knows what the height of the tree was, and he measures the length of the shadow of a fishing rod. Then he uses "trigonometry" (similar triangles).
Rosario + Vampire − Ep 1.8: Math and Vampire (2008) **** Very weird anime. In this episode, the femme fatale math teacher Ririko-sensei gives extra-curicular assistance. Lots of trig formulas, and some geometry and calculus, helped along with whips and brain-sucking plants.
Rosario + Vampire − Ep 2.8: Youth + Vampire (2008) *** Ririko-sensei is back, with her special teaching techniques. Not much math this time, but the windmill proof of Pythagoras's Theorem can be seen in the background.
Sang-doo, Let's Go To School! − Ep 7 (2003) IMDB *** Enh-wan is not a very good math teacher. She is writing up telescoping sums, when a student challenges her to solve a matrix problem. The solution requires the Cayley-Hamilton Theorem. She solves it with some outside help.
Sex and the City − Ep 2.9: Old Dogs, New Dicks (1999) IMDB ** "Hey. If 85% aren't circumcised, that means I've only slept with 15% of the population. Tops." "Wow. You're practically a virgin".
Sex and the City − Ep 2.14: The Fuck Buddy (1999) IMDB ** "You dumped him. Fits a pattern". "I don't have a pattern." "In math, randomness is considered a pattern." "Yes, and I'm what they call a prime number."
Sex and the City − Ep 2.18 : Ex and the City (1999) IMDB ** Carrie ponders her ex. "In mathematics we learn that X stands for the unknown: A + B = X. But what's really unknown is, what plus what equals friendship with an ex. Is this an unsolvable equation?" Later, she solves the equation: cosmopolitans plus scotch equals friendship with an ex.
Shine on You − Ep 1 (2004) IMDB ** A small classroom scene on identifying whether numbers are rational or irrational.
The Simpsons (1989 &rarr ) IMDB ***** Tons of clever math. Check out simpsonmath.com
The Simpsons − Girls just Want to Have Sums: Ep 17.19 (2006) IMDB ***** At Springfield primary school the boys do hard math and the girls easy maths. Too easy for Lisa, who resorts to dressing as a boy to be able to do some real math.
The Simpsons: Homer3 − Ep 7.6 (1995) (also 3D IMAX) IMDB ***** Homer stumbles into a 3D world, filled to the brim with mathematical bits and pieces.
Six Feet Under: Brotherhood − Ep 1.7 (2001) IMDB *** Math class scene, culminating in the teacher's head exploding.
The Snow Queen (2006 − 2007) **** A Korean romance, between poor math genius Tae-Woong and spoiled rich girl Bo-Ra. The plot is framed around an event 8 years earlier, when Tae-Woong wins a gold medal in the International Math Olympiad, outshining Jeong-Kyu, his competitive friend. Jeong-Kyu commits suicide, causing Tae-Woong to give up his math studies. There's a fair amount of math, mostly number theory, as an excellently quirky math professor draws Han back to his studies.
The Snow Queen − Ep 1 (2006) **** Set back in school, the teacher presents a weird functional relation, to see how far Korea will get in the World Cup. Jeong-Kyu solves the relation, and Tae-Woong points out that Jeong-Kyu assumed the function was continuous. Tae-Woong writes a report on number theory,and Jeong-Kyu incorrectly accuses him of cheating. Later they become friends, and practice together for the Olympiad. Jeong-Kyu, whose goal is to win the Fields medal, is shattered by his result in the Olympiad and commits suicide.
The Snow Queen − Ep 5 (2006) *** Tae-Woong peeks in on a university class, and notices a student trying incorrectly to use Green's Theorem to calculate the line integral of a singular function.
The Snow Queen − Ep 6 (2006) *** The Professor assigns Tae-Woong some problems, and makes fun of his solution: "The problem can be solved in 5 or 6 lines. Where did you get the talent of filling up the whole blackboard?! ... Do you think stretching it out endlessly like gum, then writing it on the board is math?" After solving the integral with a trigonometric trick, he assigns Tae-Woong to read Serre's A Course in Arithmetic.
The Snow Queen − Ep 8 (2006) ** Tae-Woong writes a paper on Jensen_Rasseas mappings, which the Professor suggests sending to the Proceedings of the AMS.
The Snow Queen − Ep 11 (2006) ** Lots of talk lattices and generators of modules, in regard to Tae-Woong's paper.
The Snow Queen − Ep 12 (2006) *** Tae-Woong gives a lecture to the Professor's students on his paper. Lots of theta functions and tensors.
The Snow Queen − Ep 13 (2006) *** The Professor gets Tae-Woong to start thinking about arithmetic sequences in primes.
The Snow Queen − Ep 14 (2006) *** Tae-Woong tries to explain amicable numbers to Bo-Ra. The Professor suggests suggests studying some dynamical systems and ergodic theory to investigate primes.
The Snow Queen − Ep 15 (2007) **** Tae-Woong describes primes as proud, lonely numbers but Bo-Ra disagrees: they always have 1 as well as themselves as divisors. Tae-Woong makes progress on his primes problem by pondering an array of colored boxing gloves. Unfortunately, he seems to be also be referring to a book called Mathematics for Economists. The Professor complains that it will be hard to get Tae-Woong's work refereed, becuase number theorists don't know ergodic theory and vice versa.
The Snow Queen − Ep 16 (2007) ** Three years later, Tae-Woong returns from America a Doctor and having won the Fulkerson Prize. He gives a lecture on his work.
South Park: Le Petit Tourette − Ep 11.8 (2007) IMDB *** Cartman is faking Tourette syndrome. There's a very funny scene where he repeatedly interrupts Mrs. Garrison, who is attempting to explain the multiplication of negative numbers.
Star Trek − Ep 1.20: Court Martial (1967) IMDB *** Captain Kirk boosts the computer by a factor of 14.
Star Trek − Ep 2.14: Wolf in the Fold (1967) IMDB *** Spock cures a computer possessed by an alien, by commanding it to calculate π to the last digit.
Star Trek − Ep 2.15: The Trouble With Tribbles (1967) IMDB *** A tribble produces a litter of 10 babies every 12 hours. Assuming none die, Spock correctly calculates that beginning with one tribble trapped in the grain hold, then at the end of three days there will be 1,771,561 tribbles.
Star Trek, The Next Generation − Ep 1.12: Datalore (1988) IMDB *** Pythagoras's Theorem is used to trick Lore into showing he knows more math than he pretends.
Star Trek, The Next Generation − Ep 2.12 : The Royale (1989) IMDB *** Captain Picard relaxes by pondering (the unproved) Fermat's last theorem.
Star Trek, The Next Generation − Ep 2.13 : Time Squared (1989) IMDB *** The Enterprise gets caught in a time loop, which Lieutenant Worf describes as "the theory of the Möbius". It's not clear why a theory of the cylinder or circle wouldn't suffice.
Star Trek, The Next Generation − Ep 3.9 : The Vengeance Factor (1989) IMDB *** Wesley Crusher: "This is the locally Euclidean metrization of a k-fold contravariant Riemannian tensor field."
Star Trek, The Next Generation − Ep 6.26 : Descent Part 1 (1993) IMDB *** Isaac Newton is summoned in hologram form, in order to play poker.
Star Trek, The Next Generation − Ep 7.10: Inheritance (1993) IMDB ** Data figures out that someone is an android because the "intervals between blinks of her eyes were governed by the Fourier system, the same mathematical formula that my father used to give my blinking pattern the appearance of randomness".
Star Trek, The Next Generation − Ep 7.25: All Good Things (1994) IMDB ** Captain Picard travels back and forth through time. In the future, Data holds the Lucasian chair of mathematics at Cambridge, living in Isaac Newton's house.
Star Trek, Deep Space 9 − Ep 3.25: Facets (1995) IMDB ** Daks says she is working on a proof of Fermat's last theorem that is different from Andrew Wiles's.
Star Trek, Voyager − Ep 2.18 : Deathwish (1996) IMDB ** Isaac Newton is summoned in hologram form.
Stargate SG-1 Ep 2.6: Thor's Chariot (1998) IMDB *** In order to gain the help of the Asgards, Daniel and Samantha must pass a test of wisdom: the Riddles of the Runes. Daniel interprets the runes as numbers: 3, 14, 15, 9. Samantha then recognizes these as the digits of π.
Stargate: Atlantis Ep 1.12: Hot Zone (2004) IMDB *** While on a boring exploration patrol, Radek and Rod while away the time by throwing each other numbers to test for primeness. (Radek incorrectly states that 4021 is not prime, but no one seems to notice). The jockish Lieutenant Ford refuses to play along: "This is some sort of payback for guys like me beating up guys like you in high school, right?"
Stargate: Atlantis Ep 4.6: Tabula Rasa (2007) IMDB *** A bacterium is causing memory loss in the crew, and McKay is really worried because his memory was always lousy: "I once forgot Mother's Day five years in a row". "What's the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter?" "Well that's pi. It's three point one four one five nine two six five etcetera etcetera. That doesn't count: that's easy".
Taken − Ep 1.3: High Hopes (2002) IMDB *** The mother of some kids doing algebra isn't coping very well with real life: "My best subject in school was algebra. People always say algebra's hard, but that is because they don't get how easy it is. I just loved all those X's. Anything you don't know, you just put down an X, or you can go with Y's, or A's and B's. In real life you have 1 plus 1, and if it doesn't equal 2, you're up a creek. But in algebra it always works, no matter what the answer is. You just have to figure out what X is."
Taken − Ep 1.7: God's Equation (2002) IMDB *** It turns out God's equation is the Fibonacci sequence: "writ large across the Heavens". This coming from two guys who just exploded a hamster. These same guys are trying to use Fibonacci numbers to track the aliens: apparently there are 55 breeding pairs, 46368 aliens in total, and so on. Fibonacci numbers are briefly mentioned again in Episode 9, where people are trying to figure out the alien language.
That Mitchell and Webb Look (2006 − 2009) IMDB *** A comedy series which includes a recurring skit, a hilarious fake game show called Numberwang. It consists of the contestants calling out seemingly random numbers, and the host pronouncing (often) when something is Numberwang. "Pi and a bit." "You mean 3.15?" "Yes." "That's Numberwang!". One episode includes an interview with Bertrand Russell, reminiscing of his discussions on Numberwang with Wittgentstein.
Threshold (2005 − 2006) IMDB *** This shortlived TV series contains the very funny character, Ramsey: a sarcastic dwarf mathematician, who likes to hang out in strip joints.
Threshold − Ep 1.1: Trees Made of Glass, 1 (2005) IMDB *** A four-dimensional alien object intersects our world and drives people insane. Nice graphics.
Threshold − Ep 1.2 : Trees Made of Glass, 2 (2005) IMDB *** The mathematician Ramsey refers to isomorphic group therapy (!), monotonic null-sequences, and quadratic reciprocity.
Threshold − Ep 1.11 : Outbreak (2006) IMDB *** The mathematician Ramsey is "determining the corresponding probability characteristics of a system of random variables" (by asking people in a market how many tomatoes they just bought and how many people make up their family.)
Thunderbirds: Sun Probe − Ep 1.11 (1965) IMDB *** "Now, Brainman, I want you to calculate the following equation. What is the square root to the power of 29 of the trigonometric amplitude of 87 divided the quantative hydraxis of 956 to the power of 77." The answer is apparently 45969.
The Twilight Zone: From Agnes With Love − Ep 5.20 (1964) IMDB *** Agnes is an erratic, jealous computer. Elwood checks her out by asking for "the first prime number larger than the 17th root of 9 000 355 126 606". Agnes "correctly" gives the answer as "five", when in fact the answer is 7. Agnes's answer would have actually been correct if Elwood had asked for 9 billion instead of 9 trillion.
The Twilight Zone: I of Newton − Ep 1.12, New Series (1985) IMDB ***** "I'd sell my soul to get this right", exclaims a frustrated mathematician. The devil promptly appears to accept the trade.
The Two Ronnies (1986) IMDB *** "And in a packed program tonight, we shall be talking to a Catholic lumberjack and his mathematician bride to be, who plan to use the Logarhythm method."
The Wire (2002 − 2008) IMDB *** In the fourth season, Prez has been forced out of the Baltimore police force, beginning a new career as a math teacher in a poor black school. Prez begins very awkwardly, but throughout the season develops an increasing rapport with his students. Somewhat reminiscent of Stand and Deliver.
The Wire − Ep 4.3: Home Rooms (2006) IMDB *** The episode is punctuated by Prez's fruitless efforts to get his students in interested in a word problem. "So, my question for you is [the bell rings to end class, and the students start banging out of the room] ... A, Who arrived in Philly first, Andre or Yvonne? ... And B, by how much time? [the room is now empty] ... And C, who gives a rat's ass?"
The Wire − Ep 4.7: Unto Others (2006) IMDB *** Prez notices his students playing poker very badly. He starts teaching them simple probabilities of cards and dice. In the later episode Know Your Place, two students want Mr. P to order candy over the internet for them to resell. He demands the cash upfront. They bring in the cash, explaining they won it in a corner crap game: "6 beats 4 or 5, and most times 8 is better than 10, right. You schoolin' me good! ..." "You shouldn't gamble." "I know. But I'm just sayin', math be right, Mr. P".
A Very Peculiar Practice (1986 − 1988) IMDB *** The main character is Stephen Daker, the new GP at a university. In the first season, his flatmate is a quirky Burmese mathematician named Chen. The flat is full of blackboards, and there are a number of scenes of a happy Chen calculating away. Mostly matrix and tensor algebra.
A Very Peculiar Practice − Ep 1.3: Wives of Great Men (1986) IMDB *** Daker comes home, sees the blackboards covered with Chen's calculations, and comments on his good day's work. Chen explains otherwise: "This is a bad day's work! On a good day, maybe one line, but a good one. Same with poetry".
A Very Peculiar Practice − Ep 1.7: Catastrophe Theory (1986) IMDB *** In the final episode of the season, all Hell is breaking loose. As a metaphoric subplot, Chen has his work on catastrophe theory stolen by a fellow mathematician.
Without a Trace: Claus and Effect − Ep 6.10 (2007) IMDB *** Glen is a brilliant math grad, who gives it up to play Santa and blackjack.
Wonder Woman: The Pluto File − Ep 1.8 (1976) IMDB *** Professor Warren uses the harmonic equation and other PDE's to create earthquakes. He then struggles to figure out how to stop them, with Wonder Woman's help: "Integral calculus is always problematical", at which point she shows the Professor the critical substitutions.
Weird Al Yankovic: I Lost on Jeopardy (1984) (Music Video) ** Parody of the gameshow, to the tune of My Life's in Jeopardy. Weird Al chooses Potpourri for 100, and has to supply the question for which the answer is the Lorentz equations.
Weird Al Yankovic: Jurassic Park (1993) (Music Video) ** Very funny parody to the tune of Macarthur Park. References to Jeff Goldblum's mathematician character: "I admit it's kinda eerie, but it proves my chaos theory ..."
Weird Al Yankovic: White & Nerdy (2006) (Music Video) *** Parody of the rap song Ridin' (Dirty): "MC Escher is my favorite MC ... Yo I know pi to a thousand places ... Do vector calculus just for fun". It appears that the first 1000 digits of π are correctly displayed.
Yakitate!! Japan − Ep 1.40 (2005) IMDB *** Pierrot sets the number 104 877 443 673 as a puzzle to decode, as a delaying tactic. But Azuma calculates almost immediately that the answer is Mamadoko: where's Mama. She notes that the number written in base 26 is (13,1,13,1,4,15,11,15), with each base 26 "digit" standing for a letter of the alphabet.
The X Files − Ep 1.22: Roland (1994) IMDB *** Roland is an idiot savant, who corrects scientists' fluid dynamics equations when he's not killing them.
The X Files − Ep 3.11: Revelations (1995) IMDB ** The teacher calls Kevin to the blackboard to divide 11 into 170. He writes up the problem, but then his hands start bleeding with the signs of stigmata.
The X Files − Ep 7.17: All Things (2000) IMDB *** Mulder wants to investigate fractal-like crop circles, the appearance of the Mandelbrot set et al. Scully is sceptical: "... I'm not interested in tracking down some sneaky farmers who happened to ace geometry in high school".
Still to Locate (Help!)
There are a number of obscure movies that we are keen to locate, some of which are listed below. As well, there are undoubtedly many math movies out there that have never even occurred to us. If you think you have something new for us, we'd be delighted to hear from you!
Aventura de Catherine C. (1990) IMDB French romance with a mathematician as a main character.
La Chèvre d'Or (1942) IMDB Blaise Pascal is apparently a character.
Évariste Galois (1984) A short movie by Danièle Baudrier.
Famous Boners (1942) IMDB Isaac Newton appears, presumably doing something clumsy with an apple.
A Lover's Oath (1925) IMDB Early movie about Omar Khayyam. Probably no math, but we'd like to check it out.
Les Maîtres du Soleil (1958) IMDB Pierre de Fermat is apparently a character.
Matemática Zero, Amor Dez (1958) IMDB An obscure Brazilian musical, about which we know absolutely nothing!
Monsieur Fabre (1951) IMDB Story of the famous entomologist (and math teacher).
Non Ho Tempo (1973) IMDB A movie about Évariste Galois.
Omar Khayyam (1924) IMDB Another early movie.
Omar the Tentmaker (1922) IMDB Yet another movie about Omar Khayyam.
Unser Fräulein Doktor (1973) IMDB A romance of two mathematicians.
Zhukovsky (1950) IMDB Apparently a movie about the Russian mathematician Nikolai Zhukovsky.