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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:
November 28, 2006
Last Friday's show has Charlie "tweaking" his face-recognition algorithm. For a review of how face recognition works, see the blog:
In this original blog, we try to match a given facial image with a library of known ones... continued »
November 27, 2006
There are all sorts of named "laws" that you hear about. The "Law of Supply and Demand," for example, tells us that that the if demand outstrips supply, prices will rise. "Gresham's Law" tells us that we tend to hoard sound money and circulate questionable currency. Newton has laws pertaining to force and motion, and a well-known "law" of gravity. Some laws are based on what we observe and others are based on theory. Some are correct and some have proved not so correct... continued »
November 21, 2006
I received an interesting letter from blog reader Stuart Smith, who actually does reflection seismology. He raises some important points which I'd like to discuss. Here are the major parts of his comments.
"Whenever I see geological tasks portrayed on TV or in movies, it is with mixed feelings: a) glad to see it, b) cringing over the details. In this case, here would have been a perfect opportunity to introduce a colorful geophysicist... continued »
November 19, 2006
Friday's episode has Charlie and Larry locating barrels of toxic waste using the technique of reflection seismology. As Charlie said when describing keyless car-door entry: "This is a totally math-based technology." In fact, the math behind it is quite modern, dating back to the mid 20th century. It is also related to the mathematics behind CAT scans and MRIs. Here's the setup... continued »
November 13, 2006
Sometime ago, in a blog about "Fireprints" (see Fireprints(12/17/05) ) I discussed baseball statistics. Here is an excerpt from that blog:
There is probably no sport for which there are more statistics than there are for baseball... continued »
November 10, 2006
In this blog I'm going to discuss how Charlie uses set theory to discover how and where the gang is using the power grid to attack.
There have been three power substations sabotaged: we'll call them A, B and C. Each attack has caused a blackouts in parts of the city.
At first, Charlie and the F.B.I... continued »
November 2, 2006
As I mentioned in the last blog, I have some problems with the logic of last week's episode. We have Danny Roberts betting on over 30 races in 5 days and winning every one of them. It certainly doesn't take a Ph.D. in mathematics to realize that something is wrong here. Has anyone ever picked 30 out of 30 winners in fair horse races? Somehow, Charlie never gets to mention how preposterous this is... continued »