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.
September 30, 2006
One of Charlie's key contributions in last night's episode is the idea of finding Megan (who'd been kidnapped) by applying the ideas of the classical "Trawler Problem" (we used to call it the "Rum-runner Problem"). Here is a somewhat simplified version; we'll deal with the slightly more complicated one afterwards.
Smugglers ("Rum-runners") and police are in two separate boats on an island. The police boat is much faster than the smuggler's boat... continued »
September 25, 2006
This is a follow-up on last Saturday's blog ("Spree": Pursuit Curves) about pursuit curves. Several readers wrote in pointing out that in "real life" pursuers don't usually run right at their quarry, but instead "aim ahead" at where they think it will be... continued »
September 24, 2006
Some of you may want to see how a solution to the "4 Bugs" problem, described in yesterday's blog, is obtained using calculus. Here is a quick write-up I put together; it requires about a year of calculus, and you'll need the Acrobat reader to display it. Even if you don't know calculus, you might like to see what the math looks like.
The 4 Bugs Problem
September 23, 2006
The main mathematics on last night's episode "Spree" had to do with pursuit curves. Here's the set up. There is a moving object, let's call it point Q. For simplicity, suppose it's moving on a flat surface, say a map. It has coordinates, which may be latitude or longitude, but we'll call them xQ and yQ. Since Q is moving, its position is changing, so its coordinates are changing with time... continued »
