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Can you suggest some good movies which involve math, probabilities etc? One example is 21. I would also be interested in movies that involve algorithms (e.g. text decryption). In general "geeky" movies with famous scientific theories but no science fiction or documentaries. Thanks in advance!

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nice idea for a collection ! @mods: Beside cw maybe renaming to "movies every statistician should have seen" or something like that ? – steffen May 7 '11 at 12:28
@steffen Thx. Better to flag the question for mods attention in the future (we aren't notified with @mods). – chl♦ May 7 '11 at 12:37
By the way, I found this page, which might add some movies to the collection: world.std.com/~reinhold/mathmovies.html – Thea May 7 '11 at 14:41
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Nothing that will inspire anybody to take up mathematics. Stick to books. – Emre May 7 '11 at 15:21
@Emre Maybe. But nevertheless it is entertaining for those who already deal with math (even more if the movie is presenting things wrong or with exaggeration). – steffen May 7 '11 at 18:38

14 Answers

up vote 12 down vote accepted

Pi

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An absorbing story and one I'd recommend, but it referred to math rather than truly involding math. I'd say the same thing about the tv show Numb3rs. – rolando2 May 7 '11 at 22:43
up vote 8 down vote

Not a movie, but a TV series: Numb3rs

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up vote 6 down vote

'A Beautiful Mind' naturally has a bit of game theory in it.

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one can also use this to generate discussion on spurious correlation – KennyPeanuts May 7 '11 at 16:56
up vote 5 down vote

The Cube

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good one. It has a not so good sequel called Hypercube. – mpiktas May 16 '11 at 11:07
@mpiktas, I never did see Hypercube, and it does not sound like I should :-) I saw The Cube some ten years ago and found it pretty entertaining. – NRH May 16 '11 at 16:47
up vote 4 down vote

21 - based on the book Bringing Down the House (MIT Blackjack team)

Near the beginning they discuss the Monty Hall Problem. However after that there isn't much actual math/probability.

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up vote 3 down vote

I have not seen this yet, but it seems somewhat geeky: Fermat's Room

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It's not particularly geeky - it is a Spanish thriller (and like all thrillers has some implausible plot lines to move the story along and resolve it at the end) with a few logic puzzles using numbers. If you want to solve the puzzles yourself, a pause button might be useful. – Henry May 7 '11 at 22:30
up vote 3 down vote

There are several movie versions of Flatland. And there's The Great $\pi$/e Debate.

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up vote 2 down vote

Early in The Social Network begins with a one night hackathon where Mark Zuckerberg uses the Elo rating system algorithm to

... create a website that rates the attractiveness of female students when compared to each other. ... in a few hours, using an algorithm for ranking chess players supplied by his best friend, Eduardo Saverin, he creates a website called "FaceMash," where students can choose which of two girls presented at a time is more attractive.

However, much of the rest of the movie is devoted to episodes of hacking, corporate politics, lawsuits, escapades, Zuckerberg's interpersonal problems, etc. But, I found it quite fascinating, overall. A great geek movie.

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up vote 2 down vote

The mathematical movie database has some great suggestions with over 800 movies (though most tenuously linked to maths) already listed. In the navy, from 1941, is probably my favourite.

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up vote 0 down vote

MONEYBALL! It's a movie where the statisticians win!

This is probably the most inspiring major motion picture about the power of quantitative methods. (if only because the plot is a little formulaic). And it shows quantitative methods (sabrmetrics) eventually coming to dominate over the backward and untested techniques of the dinosaurs of baseball.

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up vote 0 down vote

BBC Horizon - The Bible Code. It shows, that whatever codes people found in Bible, so far they didn't prove to be statistically significant.

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up vote 0 down vote

Rounders. A very watchable drama about poker players.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0128442/

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