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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:
May 21, 2007
A. Bridger points out that my statement that the grains of wheat on the chessboard is more than the atoms in the visible universe is incorrect. (There are many more atoms!!)
So here's a revised comparison. The US wheat crop in 2000 was about 7×1010 kilograms, which is 7×1013grams. Figuring about 16 grains of wheat to the gram gives the US wheat crop for that year to be about 1015 grains... continued »
May 19, 2007
Last night's show, "The Janus List," was the final episode of the season. There was mathematics galore -- enough for a few blogs. Let's start with the simplest, the "cipher" of Francis Bacon. Bacon used an alphabet of 24 letters, since in his day i and j were the same, as were u and v. To encode them, Bacon wrote them in alphabetical order next to the numbers 0 through 23... continued »
May 14, 2007
These days most of us have used a computerized "route finder": a way of finding an efficient auto-route from one specified address to another. In addition to stand-alone programs from map-making companies, these algorithms are also built into commerical GPS (= Global Positioning Systems) products, and on-line programs such as MapQuest... continued »
May 12, 2007
I am working on the blog for last night's show, which I hope to post in the next few days. Meanwhile, remember the blog on the Mandelbrot Set (12/30/05)? Well, my friend Gary Derman wrote a nifty Windows program that enables you to draw and print beautiful zooms of this amazing mathematical object... continued »
May 7, 2007
Two weeks ago, in an episode titled "The Art of Reckoning," Don negotiates with a condemned criminal to get information about several murders. The prisoner wants to see his daughter and Don intends to lean heavily on this vulnerability. Of course, the prisoner has nothing to lose except meeting his child for the first (and only) time... continued »
May 5, 2007
There was nearly no mathematics on last night's show: part of a disturbing trend in a program that's supposed to show us how "we all use math everyday." When we join Charlie at the beginning, we find that he has already created some sort of organizational chart of an LA terrorist organization. Apparently a laptop obtained from the CIA in Yemen contains the names of certain operatives -- some already known as terrorists -- and, perhaps, certain links among them... continued »