| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | |||||
This is a blog where a professor from Northeastern University's Math department posts mathematical comments on the television show "Numb3rs". To comment, write to bridger@neu.edu.
Unique visitors since 6/14/2005:
February 28, 2005
Well, math didn't figure too much in solving this week's case of the sabotaging RR engineer, but one of the main qualities which make Charlie a first-rate mathematician enables him to spot the train about to be sabotaged: the ability to see patterns... continued »
February 22, 2005
One of our colleagues has posted this account of the mathematician Norman Levinson and his work on the Riemann Hypothesis. I think you will find it very appealing.
http://www.atsweb.neu.edu/math/cp/blog/Levinson.htmlFebruary 21, 2005
As I mentioned, the Clay Mathematics Institute has offered million dollar prizes for the solutions of 7 "Millenium Problems", one of which is the proof of the Riemann Hypothesis. It is interesting to note that one of the others is the "P versus NP" problem, which Charlie has worked on from time to time (including the period when his mother was dying of cancer)... continued »
February 19, 2005
This week's episode touches on some of the most exciting and important topics in modern math research.
Prime numbers, as you probably know, are whole numbers that can't be divided evenly or exactly by any other whole numbers (except themselves and 1 or course). For example, 5 is prime since no whole number goes evenly into 5 except 1 and 5 itself. On the other hand, 6 isn't prime because 2 and 3 divide it. It turns out that every number can be written as a product of primes; e.g... continued »
February 12, 2005
For the second week in a row, Charlie makes a mistake but somehow ends up helping to solve the case. Last week he assumed that a virus was released at random in a public place. Plotting the "graph" of the cases seemed to indicate a railroad station, but he was suspicious when the pattern of infection seemed to favor a north-south spread. He reasoned that a random release should spread in all directions equally. He then revised his guess to a nearby bus-station... continued »
February 5, 2005
At lot of people who have watched "Numb3rs" have expressed disbelief that Charlie could actually predict, say, the probable location of a bank robbery, just knowing where previous ones have taken place. In fact, some mathematicians I know (more acquainted, perhaps, with "pure" or highly abstract math) have expressed the same doubts. Well, in fact, the first two episodes of Numb3ers are actually based on real-life cases where mathematicians have done just that... continued »
February 3, 2005
This blog is run by us here in the Math Department at Northeastern University in Boston http://www.math.neu.edu (Brrr), and will be devoted to the new TV show "Numb3rs". We will post comments and explanations of the math that comes up on the show. Enjoy!
Your blogmeister