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.
June 12, 2005
In the pilot episode, Charlie mentions that a bunch of randomly chosen points (positions) tends to have "clusters". Now these terms are a bit vague, but basically what he means is that the points will rarely be uniformly spaced. For example, in one dimension, if we choose say 10 random numbers between 0 and 30, it is unlikely that they will be spaced say 3 units apart. In fact, it is fairly likely that there will be two or more that are spaced just 1 unit (or less) apart... continued »
June 5, 2005
I watched "Structural Corruption" again last Friday. I already commented on the math -- see the February 12, 2005 blog. But there is still a bit more to say.
The path of an object, at least in every-day practical terms, is solely determined by the forces acting on it. The simplest and best understood is gravity. If one stays within a few miles of the surface of the earth -- where most of our day-to-day activities take place -- this force is nearly constant... continued »
