Movies

"Beautiful Mind, A" ('01)

John Forbes Nash, Jr. (Russell Crowe) is a mathematical genius who struggles after peaking early and finally earns the Nobel Prize

"Breaking the Code" ('96TV)

A biography of the English mathematician Alan Turing.

"Contact" ('97)

The math involved in deciphering the alien code.

"Cube" ('97)

Six strangers find themselves in a cubic maze, one uses math ability to find a way out.

"Dear Brigitte" ('65)

Poet father vs math prodigy son.

"Good Will Hunting" ('97)

Mat Damon is a school janitor who turns out to be a math genius.

"I.Q." ('94)

Meg Ryan is Albert's Einstein's niece

"It's My Turn" ('80)

Jill Clayburgh plays a mathematics professor

"Jurassic Park" ('93)

Jeff Goldblum is a mathematician specialising in catastrophie theory.

"Little Man Tate" ('91)

Young genius.

"Man Without a Face, The" ('93)

Mel Gibson tutors a young boy.

"Mirror has Two Faces, The" ('96)

Jeff Bridges is a math professor.

"Murder is Easy" ('82TV)

A mathematician and author, Luke Williams (Bill Bixby), solves what at first seems to be a coincidence of several deaths in a small English town.

"Pi" ('98)

Max is a genius mathematician who's built a supercomputer.

"Rain Man" ('88)

Dustin Hoffman plays a savent.

"Sneakers" ('92)

Spys using hi-tech devices and mathematics.

"Stand and Deliver" ('87)

Edward James Olmos is a high school math teacher

"Stand-In" ('37)

Atterbury Dodd is an efficiency expert who believes everything can be reduced to mathematics. He is sent to Hollywood to see whether Colossal Pictures is a good investment.

"Straw Dogs" ('71)

Dustin Hoffman moves England to work on astrophysics (and manhood).

"Ted" ('98)

The story of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynsky (Daniel Passer), done as a pseudo-documentary and narrated by his "brother" (Paul Provenza).

Cartoons

"Donald in Mathmagic Land" ('59)

An adventure of Donald showing how mathmatics can be usuful in our real life.

Books/Stories

"And He Built a Crooked House" Robert Heinlein

A story about the difficulties of 4-dimensional home design.

"Fantasia Mathematica : Being a Set of Stories, Together With a Group of Oddments and Diversions, All Drawn from the Universe of Mathematics" ('58) Clifton Fadiman(Editor)

Quotes

• The four branches of arithmetic - ambition, distraction, uglification and derision. (Lewis Caroll: "Alice in Wonderland")
• Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives. From: Ian Ellis

Jokes/Limmericks

• One that was on PBS Car Talk

  (translate it into words)
  
  ( 12 + 144 + 20
  + 3  x  SQRT(4) )
   / 7 + (5 x 11)
  = 9^2 + 0
  
  the show gave the answer as :
  
  A dozen, a gross and a score
  plus three times the square root of four
  all divided by seven
  plus five times eleven
  is nine squared and not a bit more
  

• 'Tis a favourite project of mine
  A new value of pi to assign
     I'd fix it at 3
     'Tis much simpler, you see
  Than 3.14159
  

• The integral of z squared dz
  From one to the cube root of three
     Times the co-sine
     Of three pi over nine
  Gives the log of the cube root of e.
  
  (With 'z' pronounced in the American way.)
  

• Mathematics and limericks combined,
  Requires an odd sort of mind,
     Eleizer claims "Neater"
     But can't keep the meter,
  So more towards Rob's I'm inclined.
  

Other Resources
Math in Movies

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