Mathematicians Become Hollywood Consultants

techstar25 writes "With the recent success of movies incorporating mathematics, Dr. Jonathan Farley, a professor of mathematics at the State University of New York at Buffalo who is currently doing research at Harvard, tapped into his professional knowledge and headed west to Hollywood, where he and Dr. Elizabeth Burns, founded Hollywood Math and Science Consulting to help television and movie producers portray accurate mathematics on screen. Their first client: the CBS drama Numb3rs. 'In many cases, they want me to elaborate on some of the math already in the script,' said Farley. 'I help add dialogue and fine tune the math already in the script. It's not just about fixing mathematical mistakes . . . It's also about helping them get the culture right.'"

Mathematics Out of the Closet

[geomon (78680)]

NPR covered this story [npr.org] as well. I found it interesting that the Simpsons had a writer with such an advanced degree in mathematics.

Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet

[ZephyrXero (750822)]

It would be nice if someone would do this for all computer related things. You can't just zoom in on an already fuzzy picture and sharpen it perfectly! etc...

Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet

[gvc (167165)]

Fantastic picture zooming predates computers. Columbo [imdb.com] solved many a murder by zooming in on a crowd scene or a video to disover a tatoo, monogram, birthmark, etc.

Law and Order have simply digitized the technique. One season they were fond of zooming in on the name of the particular model of Ford driven by the suspect/victim/witness.

Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet

[Dun Malg (230075)]

It would be nice if someone would do this for all computer related things. You can't just zoom in on an already fuzzy picture and sharpen it perfectly! etc...

Why limit to computers? How about relatively simple technologies like radio, or jet engines? For example, it drove me bugshit when a character on that fine piece of TV work that is "Lost" said he needed three people standing out in the boonies with some weird contraptions for him to stand in a fourth location with a handheld radio in order to perform a "triangulation" of an incoming radio signal. WTF? Didn't the scriptwriters even look up what "triangulation" means before they tried to use it as a plot device? And then there's the pilot episode with the jet engine. Yes, a jet engine upside down on the beach still running after the crash made for a very scary noise, and having it explode in a huge fireball when some dude got sucked in was impressive, but they might as well have had a 50' clown catching people in a giant popcorn bag for all the plausibility it had.

Honestly, I can suspend disbelief enough to let it slide when TV/movie writers gloss over a few peripheral technical details; but when they employ patently absurd ignorant interpretations of easily researched technology as the linchpin of that episode's story, there's no good excuse. Having worked around script writers, though, I understand why this is: most of them are fools.

Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet

[kfg (145172)]

I was just informed tonight that a book I worked on as the science consultant, one a Harvard astrophysicist has prepublication reviewed and deemed as having "impeccable science" is going to publication.

The book?

Poetry. About the making of "The Bomb."

Look mom, top of the world. I'm an "acknowledgement."

There are two things I find interesting about the whole thing. The first being that the poet was perspicacious enough to understand that he couldn't just "wing" the science and claim "poetic license." He knew he was writing about deep juju that he didn't understand and that he'd damned well better make sure he got the juju right. Most poets are fools. This one isn't. Even poetry needs to get it right.

The second thing is where I, personally, come into the picture. The poet was a college English professor with access to the whole of the college's science department, but. . .he couldn't understand a word the physicists there spoke to him. He needed a physicist who could speak physics in English; and better yet, could do so from the perspective of and in the language of a poet. Not to mention help him understand the culture of physicists and the Manhatten Project, since as a poet it was the people and the culture that was of particular interest to him. This requires someone who can step out and view their own field as an outsider. A "Man From Mars."

We met in a coffeehouse.

So, it isn't enough to simply know your science. You have to also know how to convey the concepts to the foolish script writers in a manner that fools can understand and get it right. This would appear to be an unusual skill, but I believe one absolutely essential for all scientists to cultivate, because the populace at large is dependent upon us to explain these things to them; and if we don't do a good job we get nonsense like state legislatures introducing bills to make pi equal to 3, which carries far greater consequences them some stupid movie doing something stupid.

And I'm really rather flattered by the review, as it reflects the quality of my work on the book.

KFG

Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet

[Dun Malg (230075)]

I didn't see the episode, but your description is just wrong. If you take a bearing from three known positions, what are you doing with those bearings? Creating a triangle from those 3 positions you took a bearing of? That doesn't tell you anything.

It's not wrong, you just misunderstood me.

Triangulation in order to find a radio source involves taking a bearing with a directional antenna tuned to the signal you're trying to find (which you don't know where it is) from 2 known positions. The point where the lines cross is where the source is (exactly, not within a small triangle).

I was a signal intelligence analyst in the army. The place where those two lines cross is NEVER exactly where those two lines cross. That's why you need to do a third "cut" from a third position. In a perfect universe, that third line would intersect exactly where the other two cross, giving you a perfect fix. In reality, that third line will be somewhere to one side or the other of the intersection of the first two.The three lines form a (hopefully) tiny triangle. Your fix is within this triangle. This is probably where you misunderstood wme. This small triangle is not where the process of triangulation gets its name. You are correct in that basic triangulation involves the signal bearing from two know points forming a triangle with the target, but a military man (as the character is purported to be*) with any training in radio direction finding will always take a minimum of three DF shots (four or five is better, six is usually overkill) before declaring a positive fix on a stationary target.

* The character is supposedly former "Republican Guard", but his back story has him torturing dissidents-- the sole province of the Mukhabarrat. This is like confusing the US Army with the FBI-- it's just fucking stupid. THe writers for the show are the worst kind of stupid: idiots that think they know what they're talking about and are so sure of themselves they never check their "facts".

Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet

[by Anonymous Coward]

we all know it really takes FOUR clicks

Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet

[tempmpi (233132)]

Actually it is possible. BUT not from a single frame but from a video. Do a search on citeseer or google on "superresolution" and you will find a bunch of papers about how to guess single high res frames from a video.

The brain is damn good at that too btw. Try it, reduce a video to a really small resolution, watch it and you will be impressed about how much you can recognize when it moves.

Re:Mathematics Out of the Closet

[BWJones (18351)]

It's not just mathematics features that need this. Every time I watched an X-Files, or movie where bioscience was rendered in film, I cringed at some of the silliness or unrealistic determinations that are made based upon the technology rendered.

futurama is degree heavy also

[k2enemy (555744)]

there was actually a slashdot article [slashdot.org] about this too.

david x cohen - physics at harvard (b)
- computer science at berkeley (masters)

stewart burns - math at harvard (phd)

ken keeler - applied math at harvard (phd)

bill odenkirk - chem at chicago (phd)

jeff westbrook - computer science at princeton (phd)

numb3rs huh?

[ShaniaTwain (197446)]

Their first client: the CBS drama Numb3rs.

maybe they should get a spelling consultant too?

Re:numb3rs huh?

[cephyn (461066)]

yeah. there's WAY more symbols and numbers in 1337sp34|

Getting the culture right.

[gardyloo (512791)]

These are Hanes-32. My boxer shorts have my name in them.... I get my boxer shorts at K-Mart in Cincinnati, 400 Oak street.

This needs to be done more!

[jakel2k (736582)]

Too bad there are no Jedi around.

Now if someone

[martian265 (156352)]

Now if someone would do the same thing with computers/technology.

I know that I'm not the only one that gets sick everytime I see an actor "polishing" up an image by typing randomly onto the computer while looking at nothing but the image itself. Or someone hacking into a computer with 3 keystrokes.

I guess Hollywood thinks that most of the public are so mystified by computers that they'll believe anything.

Re:Now if someone

[mark-t (151149)]

I guess Hollywood thinks that most of the public are so mystified by computers that they'll believe anything.

They are right.

Swordfish

[by Anonymous Coward]

You mean nobody ever holds a gun to your head while somebody goes down on you to make sure you finish a project on deadline?

That's company policy around here and the only problem is that you take turns being the programmer.

Re:Now if someone

[lastchance_000 (847415)]

I wouldn't call that an error. In most offices I've been in, that's exactly what most non-IT workers would do when given those instructions.

Re:Now if someone

[MutantHamster (816782)]

Now that's silly! That reminds me of a Garfield I saw where he ate an entire cake! No cat could eat that much! He'd get sick! Oh, I wish they'd hire some consultants for that horrible Jim Davis.

Hmm...

[physicsphairy (720718)]

So instead of having dashingly handsome and witty mathematicians who know kung fu and have packs of women trailing at their feet... now we're going to have eccentric old guys with frizzy hair talking for half an hour about homogeneous manifolds not realizing until an hour later that they came in on the wrong day and that's why none of their students are there?

Heh, I look forward to having the movie theaters all to myself when these new movies come out. :)

Here it comes

[by Anonymous Coward]

Now we get to read a bunch of whining posts about how Hollywood always gets computers and math and science wrong.

GET OVER IT!

It is just entertainment. Does anyone think that anything shown on the large or small screen is real!? You think geeks are the only "insiders" cringing when they see something on screen? If so, don't be so arrogant. Bus drivers cringed through SPEED. Pilots can point out problems in any script. Don't get started on "medicine" on TV. Even tarot card readers think Hollywood gets it all wrong.

Say it with me know, "Window dressing" and for the advanced students, "Plot device".

Killjoys

[Locke2005 (849178)]

Next thing you know, they will be pointing out that cars going off a cliff don't magically burst into flames in mid air, and that any bullet with enough momentum to pick up the bad guy and carry him 20 feet backwards though the air would have to do the same to the person holding the gun, and that when Superman leaps up from the ground to catch Lois as she is falling from a skyscraper the impact velocity would be much greater than if she just hit the pavement, and that you can't hear explosions in space... well what fun will it be to watch movies then?

Re:Killjoys

[tgibbs (83782)]

Not quite. While being thrown 20 feet is of course nuts, it is not unexpected that a bullet would extert more force on the target than the shooter, if we are talking about a semi-automatic. In that case a good portion of the recoil is absorbed into the reloading mechanism (the slide).

Momentum cannot be "absorbed" by the slide because it is conserved. The force can be spread out in time, but the momentum transfer is unchanged. Check out the Mythbusters episode in which they shoot a human-sized hunk of meat hanging from a hook with powerful rifles. It barely moves. There simply isn't that much momentum in a bullet.

Re:Killjoys

[Chirs (87576)]

Let's take a typical .45 bullet. A bit of googling gives 225 grains with a muzzle velocity of 960 feet/sec. This converts to about 31 pound feet/sec of momentum.

This is equivalent to a 186lb man travelling one foot every 6 seconds. Doesn't really sound like a whole lot, now does it?

Hollywood cares about accuracy?

[homer_ca (144738)]

The guys directing the car chases must not have gotten the memo. How do you explain this?

- Cars that explode in midair when they go over a cliff before hitting anything
- Ducati 916 motorcycles that can't outrun a Lincoln Town Car (Fled)
- Tom Cruise shooting behind him over his shoulder using a motorcycle rearview mirror to aim
- Tires squealing on dirt roads
- Soundtrack to John Connor's dirt bike upshifts 20 times without downshifting

Re:Hollywood cares about accuracy?

[Surt (22457)]

These are easy to explain.

- Cars that explode in midair when they go over a cliff before hitting anything

Easy: bombs in the gas tank. You should always check for angle activated bombs in your gas tank before driving over a cliff.

- Ducati 916 motorcycles that can't outrun a Lincoln Town Car (Fled)

You've gotta remember to use premium.

- Tom Cruise shooting behind him over his shoulder using a motorcycle rearview mirror to aim

Even I've done this on one occassion. A star with proper training should have no difficulty.

- Tires squealing on dirt roads

It's the people just under the dirt squealing, and believe me you would too.

- Soundtrack to John Connor's dirt bike upshifts 20 times without downshifting

That was a custom bike. He clearly did work on it in one scene earlier. He added a lot of gears.

I'll bet [objoke]

[lildogie (54998)]

Two math consultants are sitting in the studio cafeteria, and one says to the other: "I'll bet you $50 that waitress is an unemployed mathematician."

His friend the bet. Then while his friend is in the washroom, he calls the waitress over and says "There's a $20 tip for you if, after my friend comes back, you come over and answer my next question "four thirds pi r cubed."

So his friend comes back from the washroom, and the waitress comes over and he says to her, "What's the integral of pi r squared?"

"Four thirds pi r cubed," she says, "plus a constant."

Re:I'll bet [objoke]

[trendyhendy (471691)]

That's one dumb waitress, because the integral is actually one third pi r cubed (plus a constant).

Re:I'll bet [objoke]

[donutello (88309)]

An unemployed mathematician meets an employed mathematician.

Q: What does the employed mathematician say to the unemployed mathematician?

A: Do you want fries with that?

Re:I'll bet [objoke]

[zoloto (586738)]

Speaking of jokes, here's a good one.

Did you hear about the constipated mathematician?

He worked it out with a pencil! /bad //so bad

Re:I'll bet [objoke]

[Vo0k (760020)]

A famous maths professor working at a university, one day calls a plumber because his tap is leaking. The plumber replaces the seal, presents the bill.

"Whoa! That's a week of my salary! For replacing a simple seal!"
"Want to earn as much as I do? Become a plumber. It really IS that easy."

So the professor decided to give it a try. And it really worked out great. He left the university, he was repairing pipes, replacing seals, several works a week, salary about 20 times what he would get from the university. It lasted several years.

Until the Union decided all plumbers need to have at least high school finished. So, there were some classes to refresh the memory and then a test. And the math class, teacher calls our professor to the blackboard and asks to write the formula for surface of a circle.

And the professor realises it was so long ago since he used it last, sometime during studies yet, that he forgot! But he thinks, "I'm a math professor. I can derive that formula". So he starts deriving it. Draws a circle, splits into infinite number of infinitisemal pieces, adds Jacobian for radial projection, integrates and satisfied, writes: S=-pi*r^2.

But hey, that minus must be wrong, surface can't be negative. So he starts checking his calculations, looks at them, examines, can't find the mistake. Time passes, the teacher looks, more and more annoyed, whispers rise from the classroom, and after a while they become recognisable: "Reverse the limits of the integral! Reverse the limits of the integral!"

The actor who plays the "genius"

[Eunuch (844280)]

Is a math-dummy. Read about it in some gossip rag. He needs to practice what he writes awhile because he has no idea what it really means. Another example of how social skills and looks get you far in a world where math skills are optional. A socially skilled actor with no math skills lands a great job like this. A math genius with no social skills has no hope of getting anything!

badastronomy.com & movies

[G4from128k (686170)]

Phil Plait is an astronomer/teacher who likes to debunk or comments on movies/media/etc. at BadAstronomy.com. I've seen this guy at a conference and he's very amusing.

The core problem with science/math in movies and TV shows is that reality is often too boring to make it on film. Writers/directors/studios feel the need to violate the laws of physics rather than violate the laws of entertainment. I can only hope that shows such as Numb3rs can reverse (or at least) minimize this tendency.

For example?

[Chess_the_cat (653159)]

With the recent success of movies incorporating mathematics.

Care to provide examples of your claim?

Re:For example?

[Locke2005 (849178)]

Good Will Hunting, A Beautiful Mind...

Every specialist sees the errors

[whitearrow (680715)]

Anyone who is a professional or specialist in anything can be driven crazy by how it's portrayed in entertainment.

Cops, firefighters, lawyers, doctors, psychiatrists, social workers (I have a friend who can go on about Judging Amy for hours), military people, airline pilots, etc., etc. -- all of them can go on and on about how inaccurate entertainment portrays their job or profession. So scientists and computer specialists are not alone.

The bottom line, IMO, is that hey, it's entertainment, not a documentary, and whatever the *thing* is -- whether it's computers or legal procedure or spy technology or whatever -- is supposed to be in service of telling the story and revealing character, not the other way around. Yes, Hollywood makes lots of mistakes that could be fixed very easily, but the majority of any given set of viewers probably won't know or care -- in fact, they might even think something's wrong because the entertainment didn't conform to the cliche.

The way entertainment shapes real life expectations is a real issue, and one lawyers in particular are concerned about -- they call it the "CSI effect" on juries, the expectation that fancy forensics will be present in every case, when they usually aren't.

But as for the entertainment itself, it's usually good if the "stuff" is used in service of the story. I sucked at math my entire life (until prob/stat in college, which I was actually good at) but I really enjoy Numb3rs. The math -- whether it's real or not -- is used very effectively in service of the story, and there's a nice dynamic between the FBI brother and the math professor brother. And the professor Peter MacNicol plays reminds me of a brilliant but absent-minded professor I had once. On the library steps, after a conversation: "When you first saw me, was I going into this building or coming out of it?" LOL.

Re:Every specialist sees the errors

[Edmund Blackadder (559735)]

Lawyers are very worried about legal shows, and not just because of the inacuracies. Actually, entertainment's treatment of law is usually more accurate than its treatment of science and math, because a lot of the writers have had legal training.

However, some shows set really bad example. For example in Law and Order which is supposed to be the most serious and respected of the legal shows, the main hero of the show (the prosecutor) keeps doing things that are either illegal or immoral for an attorney in his position. It usually has something to do with hiding evidence that he is supposed to submit to the defence, or tricking a defendent or a witness. And the show celebrates these breaches of the ethics rules, essentially portraying the prosecutor in being really clever in getting the bad guy.

Pretty much every second part of every eposode is portrayed as a heroic battle between the good guys (that prosecutor and an ever changing hot female prosecutor) on one side and the forces of evil (the civil rights of the defendant and the rules of ethics) on the other side. I have yet to see a show where an innocent defendant has been spared inprisonment because of the proper observance of his rights.

And of course since more or less the whole population has seen at least several Law and Order episodes (and many people watch that show religously), when the government decides to curb civil rights, the people don't really mind, which is not what you would really expect from this freedom loving nation.

Re:Math Culture?

[geomon (78680)]

What exactly is Math culture?

The stuff found growing inside of a calculus textbook?

Re:Almost...

[geomon (78680)]

Thanks, smartass, for ruining a perfectly good joke with "facts". ;)

I had no idea that calculus was so ickey.

It's the Cult of the Red Heifer

[weston (16146)]

This [canncentral.org] is math culture.

"We were all in advanced analysis or something. We'd been working on a proof in class for a week, and we'd reached an impasse, an impossible stage, and in the dream logic, the only way we were going to be able to progress was if (and only if) someone cut off their arm: the requirement was 'proof by mutilation.' And the scary thing was, we were going to do it, there was no question or discussion about that, the only thing we hadn't settled yet was whose arm we were going to use."

Re:Math Culture?

[Valacosa (863657)]

The mathies where I am [uwaterloo.ca] stick out like sore thumbs --- at least there's a definite "culture" to the math building. Often there's some board game being played in the lounge like Titan or Settlers. If not that, then at least someone's playing Magic: The Gathering. They like not sleeping (and gaming instead), and bemoan the lack of women in their faculty. (Though my department, Physics, is worse off.)

Then there's the jokes.
Q: What do you get when you cross a banana with a goat?
A: |goat| * |banana| * sin(t

Re:Math Culture?

[Frogbert (589961)]

Average Joe: How does that work.
Mathman: You wouldn't understand meer mortal. I grow weary of this conversation... away with you peasant!
Average Joe leaves in disgust to talk to women.
Mathman: ... I'm so lonely.

Re:Math Culture?

[EventHorizon (41772)]

Mathgirl: Hey Mathman! Can you teach me how to integrate around a pole?

Yeah, well.. a theorist can dream.

Spammers, 911

[grasshoppa (657393)]

Follow our sorta brave team as they eat pizza, read slashdot, and, eventually, figure out who sent them the Penis Enlargement ads.

Tonight! On Spammers, 911: The team finds a traitor in the midst, he purchased Viagra from South Africa. Will he be sorry! Stay tuned.

Re:...And while they're at it...

[His name cannot be s (16831)]

I'm tired of computers that can scan billions of fingerprints instantly,

Actually this irritates me so much.

The match on fingerprints is actually lighting fast (and doesn't have any graphical comparison crap), but the scanning in and identifing points can take even an experienced tech hours.

I really hate DNA match magic that CSI uses... not only does it set a false image into people's mind as to how easy it is, but jurors will often beleive that if no DNA evidence is entered, that gives them resonable doubt, regardless of the massive amount of evidence in front of them.

Hmmm, while we're at it, I'm sick of the shows where people just seem to be able to hack into stuff (NCIS--Very irritating), or where they just start spewing mumbo-fucking-jumbo. ("I hacked into the Router's backbone NAS Mainframe, where I adjusted their DSL lookup server to allow me to track the GPS Meta-quad jigaflops." ) --eh, NCIS is bad for that too.

Re:...And while they're at it...

[BitGeek (19506)]

And there's real damage done here--- for instance, how many americans serving on jurors believe that fingerprints can be used to tie someone to a crime? Probably almost all of them-- and because they've seen a lot of BS TV shows where fingerprints are "proof" that the bad guy did it.

Hell, I bet most slashdot readers are under this misimpression.

But the reality is, fingerprints are not unique.

Hell, not even DNA is unique in the way that it is used. (To do an actual DNA match, you'd have to sequence the entire genome... which was only done finally within the last decade and they used a bunch of people's DNA, not one person's.)

Also the odds given for false matches are completely absurd, based on pseduo science.

But all this pseudo science presented in fiction is taken as reality.

Real people think that computers can be hacked really quickly and locks picked in 30 secons and fingerprints are unique. (And even more absurd, that you can tie a gun to a crime based on the markings on the bullets-- reading tea leaves is just as fruitful.)

Re:Tech in Twenty-Four

[cbuskirk (99904)]

Are you kidding! I'm I much better tech thanks to 24. Now I can fix any problem by opening up a socket.

Re:They do need help

[cens0r (655208)]

Actually if I remember correctly the FBI really did you statistics to predict where a bank robbery would occur and one of the locations they projected was correct.

Smarten Up

[fprefect (14608)]

[i]We see that once again the need for ratings overwhelms the need for completeness and accuracy.[/i]

Seriously? What do you think people would rather watch, someone working through complex equations on paper or a chalkboard for hours on end, or generating a few models and then explaining how they apply to the real world? Is your need for accuracy so important that you are double-checking their work instead of paying attention to the plot of the show? Have you stop watching SciFi since you realized there are no such things as transporters and aliens, and that hacking into a Gibson isn't nearly as fun as they make it look?

Sure, it's not 100% accurate, but neither are the forensics dramas, murder mysteries, or hospital shows. People don't want to watch the all boring bits of someone else's life where they catalog swabs, fill out paperwork, or treat someone's rash. It's a drama, it's supposed to be about the story and the science or math is mostly there to give it some context. If it shows people that there are practical applications for otherwise cerebral stuff, then it also encourages education and research, which is a win for everyone.

I understand you, as a math major, had higher expectations for the show, but what's the point of making a show that only 0.1% of the population can even follow, let alone want to watch? Maybe you work on equations all day and want to come home and see it mixed in with your police dramas, but I doubt many people do. Still, I find their characterizations and science to be reasonable, maybe a little sophomoric but much better than most of the fluff out there.

Re:Thank God

[henni16 (586412)]

To ease the effects watch and remember Futurama;
stuff like the shelf with the two books labeled "P" and "NP" (IIRC in "Put Your Head on my Shoulder"),