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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)
Still To process/watch/get etc. (Help!)
This page complements our book with the same title, which will be published by Springer Verlag. Below is a list of titles and short descriptions of over 400 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.
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.
Death of a Cyclist (Muerte de Un Ciclista) (1955) IMDB A mathematics professor is a main character. In one extended scene we see a student working on a spectacular blackboard, full of equations and drawings of rolling curves (cycloids and the like).
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.
The Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells (2001) (TV) IMDB The Pyecraft episode in this mini-series is a fun fantasy about a gentle mathematician.
In the Navy (1941) IMDB Just one scene: the famous and hilarious routine in which Costello proves 7x13=28 in three different ways.
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 Story of 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.
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.
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 aids 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".
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.
The Arrival (1996) IMDB *** Very funny blooper involving an incorrect way to add percentages.
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 ***** A movie about the brilliant mathematician John Nash, who won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work in game theory.
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.
Beginning of the End (1957) IMDB $
Believers (2007) (V) IMDB *** A movie about a math cult whose leader has discovered a formula that will transport its members to a safe place before the end of the world. The cult members have the formula tattooed on their bodies and all commit suicide (before the end of the world).
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.
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 possibly 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 in action.
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.
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 *** Archimedes using 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.
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.
Cast Away (2000) IMDB ** Tom Hanks calculates 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 * Creepy blond children learn quickly, including a scene with some relativity equations.
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.
Cloak and Dagger (1946) IMDB *** Gary Cooper in hiding passes the time by drawing on a wall, calculating the line integral of a sine 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 for 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".
Codename Icarus (1981) (TV) IMDB $
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.
Crazy (2000) IMDB ** A boy in a boarding school has problems with math (amongst other things).
Crazy First Love (Cheotsarang Sasu Gwolgidaehoe) (2003) IMDB $
Creepshow (1982) IMDB ** Somebody at a party is introduced as a mathematician.
Croupier (1998) IMDB $
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.
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 10 seconds of Riemann Christoffel symbols.
D.A.R.Y.L. (1985) IMDB $
The Da Vinci Code (2006) IMDB *** The Fibonacci sequence makes an appearance in various scenes.
The Day after Tomorrow (2004) IMDB * The teenage hero is introduced as a precocious math student.
Day One (1989) (TV) IMDB $
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 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.
The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947) IMDB $
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 ..."
Die Hard: With a Vengence (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."
Doctor Who: The Five Doctors (1983) (TV) IMDB ** Dr Who figures out that the key to crossing a deadly chessboard lies in the digits of π.
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.
Drawing Down the Moon (1997) IMDB *** Crazy B-grade movie, with a mathematician as the bad guy and a flaky witch character as the good guy. A few fractals appear, for reasons which are hard to discern.
Dreams in the Witchhouse (2005) IMDB $
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".
Einstein: Light to the Power of 2 (1996) (TV) IMDB $
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.
Elephant (2003) IMDB $
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 Evariste 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."
The Favor (1994) IMDB **** Fun romantic comedy with a mathematician as the husband (and Brad Pitt as the "favor"). Very funny scene of his 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.
Firetrap (2001) IMDB * An isolated scene containing a whiteboard with differential equations.
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.
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 lovely 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.
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".
Galileo (1975) IMDB $
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 $
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.
Good Will Hunting (1997) IMDB ***** Movie about a math prodigy with tons of mathematics.
Gorath (Yosei Gorasu) (1962) IMDB $
Gravesend (1997) IMDB $
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.
Gulliver's Travels (1996) (TV) IMDB ** Archimedes, wearing a bath towel, runs around shouting "Eureka!".
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.
Hauser's Memory (1970) (TV) IMDB $
Hercules (1997) IMDB *** Some funny scenes, with characters mistating quantities being even or odd.
A Hill on a 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.
Hindle Wakes (1931) IMDB $
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.
Hotel Hilbert (1996) IMDB **** David Hilbert's vision of infinities is brought to life in story form. Quite strange, and a lot of fun.
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.
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 $
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?"
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-fifth. How many centimeters of wire are left on the roll?" He's got one hour to solve this problem. His answer (24) is wrong. Still, he gets the job.
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 (Im Juli) (2000) IMDB * One of the characters is studying for a masters in mathematics.
I Not Stupid (Xiaohai Bu Ben) IMDB $
The Infinite Worlds of H. G. Wells (2001) (TV) IMDB **** The Pyecraft episode in this mini-series 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.
The Invisible Boy (1957) IMDB $
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.
It's a Big Country (1951) IMDB $
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.
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.
Izo (2004) IMDB *** Angry samurai running around on a Möbius strip.
Jam Films 2 (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.
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.
Kronos (1957) IMDB * Silly sci-fi movie with a bit of nonsensical mathtalk.
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 Sting 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 $
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.
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.
Late Bloomers (1996) IMDB $
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."
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 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 $
Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm (1951) IMDB *** Pa and Ma Kettle's version of the famous Abbott and Costello routine. They show in three different ways that 5 x 14 = 25.
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 geoemtric 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".
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 a la Pacman.
Mean Girls (2004) IMDB **** A great movie for math spotting on blackboards. Main character is a very pretty girl who is very good at math. Encouraged by her teacher 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 the new section is acting like a Möbius band (whatever that means).
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) IMDB *** Very strange logic is used to convict a woman of witchcraft.
Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982) IMDB *** Archimedes has his Eureka moment, competing in the Germany vs. Greece football match: kick the ball. His 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 $
La Moutarde Me Monte au Nez (1974) IMDB $
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.
Mr. Koumal invents a Robot $
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 pretty wife has a PhD in math.
National Lampoon's Senior Trip (1995) IMDB * A couple stray lines about math nerds.
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.
Nightmare Weekend (1986) IMDB $
Ni Vivo Ni Muerto (2002) IMDB $
No Highway in the Sky (1951) IMDB $
Not One Less (Yi Ge Dou Bu Neng Shao) (1999) IMDB $
No Way Out (1987) IMDB ** Quick reference eigenvalues and Fourier transforms, for cleaning up data.
The Number 23 (2007) IMDB $
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.
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.
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?"
Peter the Great (1986) (TV) IMDB *** Peter the Great visits Isaac Newton to discuss his Principia.
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.
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.
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 $
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 ***** Story of 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.
P.S. (2004) IMDB * One physics lecture contains blackboards full of formulas on gravitation.
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. Not all of the funny math lines from J. M. Barrie's play did not make it to the movie.
Quest of the Delta Knights (1993) IMDB ** Archimedes being killed by a Roman soldier.
Qui perd gagne! (2003) IMDB **** A math teacher claims to have found a system for predicting the lotto and he proves it by winning the jackpot twice. An expert gambler with a perfect memory is called in by the police to find out what is going on. 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 $
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 highschool 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.
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 keep tossing 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.
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.
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 specializing 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 $
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. One of the main characters is 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.
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."
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.
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."
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.
Strike it Rich (1990) IMDB $
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 $
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.
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.
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. 91100."
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.
They Won't Believe Me (1947) IMDB $
Thieve's Highway (1949) IMDB $
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 a confusion between feet (') and inches (") results in the building of a miniscule Stonehenge.
Time Machine (2002) IMDB ** An absolutely humongous wall covered with blackboards.
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.
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 $
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.
To Sir, with Love (1967) IMDB * Miscellaneous bits and pieces of simple math in classroom scene.
True as a Turtle (1957) IMDB $
Unabomber: the True Story (1996) (TV) IMDB ** Story of Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber. Very minor references to the fact that he is a Harvard-trained, but he's never really identified as a mathematician.
Village of the Damned (1960) IMDB $
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.
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 ** In one scene Harrison Ford as the policeman and the Hamish woman he has fallen in love with are listening and dancing to Sam Cooke's song "Don't know much about history, ... don't know much about geometry, don't know much about trigonometry, don't know much about algebra, don't know what a sliderule is for, but I do know 1 and 1 is two and if this one could be with you what a wonderful world this could 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".
ABBA : When I Kissed the Teacher (1976) (Music Video) *** A music video featuring a math teacher and geometric formulas on a blackboard.
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".
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 to one) "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."
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.
Doctor Who − Ep 5.1 - 5.4: The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967) IMDB IMDB IMDB IMDB $
Doctor Who − Ep 13.9 - 13.12: Pyramids of Mars (1975) IMDB IMDB IMDB IMDB $
Doctor Who − Ep 18.25 - 18.28: Logopolis (1981) IMDB IMDB IMDB IMDB *** Logopolis is a planet/city populated by mathematicians who are doing a sort of mental/manual mathematics that influences matter.
Doctor Who − Ep 19.19 - 19.22: Earthshock (1982) IMDB IMDB IMDB IMDB $
Doctor Who − Ep 21.21 - 21.24: The Twin Dilemma (1984) IMDB IMDB IMDB IMDB $
Doctor Who − Ep 25.8 - 25.10: Silver Nemesis (1988) IMDB IMDB IMDB $
Eleventh Hour − Ep 3: Kryptos (2006) IMDB ** A brilliant meteorologist uses the Fibonacci numbers to model climate change.
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 do 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."
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 describing the mod 4 calculation to do so.
Futurama (1999 − 2003) 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.
Help − Ep 1.5 (2005) *** IMDB Hilarious scene of a mathematician trying to explain Fermat's last theorem to his clueless psychiatrist.
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 on 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.
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.
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.
The Return of Sherlock Holmes − Ep 1.3: The Musgrave Ritual (1986) IMDB *** As part of a treasure hunt Sherlock Holmes has to figure out the length of the shadow of an Elm tree that has been chopped down. He knows the height of the tree and then calculates the length of the shadow from the height of a fishing rod and the length of its shadow.
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.
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 hard math and the girls easy maths. Too easy for Lisa who ends up 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.
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 *** 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 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, 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.
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: I of Newton − Ep 1.12, New Series (1985) (TV) IMDB ***** "I'd sell my soul to get this right", exclaims a frustrated mathematician. The devil promptly appears to accept the trade.
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.
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 Yankovi