The Phi Number System

I watched the movie pi this weekend. A movie about a Number Theorist who thinks he has found a very, very special number of exactly 216 digits. Both the CIA, and Jewish fundamentalists are after him, the latter think the number is the key to The Garden of Eden. This movie is not a typical Hollywood thriller as it is directed by Darren Aronofsky, who later directed Requiem of a Dream. Filmed in 1998, it's a black and white movie trying to create an atmosphere of the late fifties or early sixties. Not that it matters, mathematics is the same in all times. Now, one million years ago and forever and forever in the future. Mathematics is exactly that what does not change over time. PI will forever be ~3.14.

( The mathematician, Max Cohen, is played by the same actor who played 'Arnold, the Shrink' in Requiem for a Dream, a great actor. In fact, the assistant of the doctor in Requiem, the Indian girl, is Max'es neighbour girl in pi. The older professor who has been searching for patterns in the digits of pi for more than 40 years ( without any result ) is the owner of the pawnshop in Requiem. That's what they call Trivia. )

I love mathematics it fills my life with joy, energy, enthusiasm. Take today, for instance. As I am in the middle of projects, mathematics projects I mean, I feel a bit unsure about the direction I should pursue. Computational Group Theory? Representation Theory? And then this idea of building a 3D-model of the BrainTwist game, including a group theoretic analysis of it all, and if that isn't enough, a solution for the game. Rather ambituous, although I am sure I can do it. The construction of the 3D Rubik gave me that confidence. I am still swimming in uncertainty. But the emptyness is gone. Filled with beaty of... the Phi Number System. It was as though lightning struck. I have been warned that pi is the sort of movie that slowly gets you, sometimes days after it was seen. In my case I noticed a strong resemblence with the 3x+1 Research I have been doing early 2005, how time can fly.

Where is all this beauty?

• phi on MathWorld
• phi