Terence Tao explains the music of the primes.

A talk on primes by Terence Tao. ( Tao won all the prizes there are to give. Charlie Eppes for real? A living Ramanujan? Decide for yourself. )

We start with a "sound wave" that is "noisy" at the prime numbers and silent at other numbers; this is the von Mangoldt function. Then we analyze its notes or frequencies by subjecting it to a process akin to Fourier transform; this is the Mellin transform. Then we prove, and this is the hard part, that certain "notes" cannot occur in this music. This exclusion of certain notes leads to the statement of the prime number theorem. - Tao

Mathematics in the Movies

Not counting Numb3rs there aren't many movies truly about math. As far as I know anyway. I know of the following movies ( in alphabetical order ):
- A Beautiful Mind
- Flatland
- PI
- Proof.
All these movies are fairly recent. The oldest is PI, from 1998. So that's encouraging. There is a movie about Ramanujan / Hardy in the works. Looking forward to that one.

Math Speak

There are circles where this is common speak, really:

"How many consecutive digits of pi (3.1415 . . . ) can you display with a deck of cards?"

But it is the sort of question Charlie Eppes might have asked when he was eight years old or so.

numb3rs, 215: Running Man

Benford's Law. Very counter intuitive, but true. And explainable.

(Or: Be careful when creating a 'random' set! What is random anyway? )

The psychology of Charlie Eppes.

He is often shown "stimming". "Stimming" is basically self-stimulation, a repetitive sound or motion made by people who have difficulty integrating all the sensory input around them as a buffer between themselves and the sensory stimulus.

Charlie has sensory integration issues. This means he has difficulty integrating sensory input around him into a cohesive whole, something that most of us do automatically but is sometimes an exhausting task for individuals in the autism spectrum. Charlie wears enormous headphones with no music playing while figuring out a math problem.

Charlie fails to see the big picture at almost every turn and has extreme difficulty anticipating spontaneous behavior. Charlie is most comfortable with inductive reasoning, and despite his high intelligence levels, finds deductive reasoning difficult at best.

Charlie struggles to interpret social cues from others, when he picks up on them at all. Charlie rarely intuits when he annoys everyone around him, either with his single-minded preoccupation with mathematics or his inability to accurately read the nuances of social situations. He is very literal minded, often rambles past the point where anyone is listening, and in fact, sometimes DOES NOT NOTICE everyone has stopped listening.

Charlie fails to connect his concrete theorizing to abstract human reality, and in fact, doing so is deeply disturbing to him.

Charlie displays an extremely limiting and persistent social naivete that also can translate as extreme social immaturity. He is 27, doesn't date, doesn't notice that his very pretty friend is probably interested in him.

There is the compulsive and completely preoccupying nature of Charlie's obsession with discrete mathematics.

( This entry is a summary of this article on "tv makes you stupid". )

numb3rs

We all use math every day; to predict weather, to tell time, to handle money. Math is more than formulas or equations; it’s logic, it’s rationality, it’s using your mind to solve the biggest mysteries we know.

I like numb3rs. I suppose one of the ideas behind the series is to promote mathematics as one of the cool professions. Well they should, because mathematics is definitely cool.