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Mathematics Goes to the Movies

by Burkard Polster and Marty Ross

Straw Dogs (1971)

3:32
AMY: David is a mathematician?
……
Charlie: Oh, an arithmetic teacher
DAVID: Well…
AMY: No, he is writing a book on the computer analysis of the celestial…
DAVID: Good try…

14:39
Wife changes plus to minus sign.

16:54/18:21/20:04/21:23
blackboard

17:51
David changes minus sign back

23:50
David is supposed to do 100 skips with a skipping rope. Cheats.
AMY: You are supposed to do a hundred.
DAVID: I did a hundred. I counted by binary numbers.

27:38
Good shot of blackboard

41:45
DAVID: I’m a, uh, astral mathematician.
REVEREND : Oh, never heard of it.
DAVID: That’s because I just made it up… I have a grant to study possible structures in stellar interiors and the implications regarding their radiation characteristics.

43:30
AMY: David, what is a binary number?
DAVID: Uh, zeros or ones, plus or minus
AMY: In sequences of twos.
DAVID: Hey, that is right.