h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.cbs.com/primetime/numb3rs/

Sadly those of us not in America aren't likely to see this for several years, if at all, but it sounds kind of interesting.

For all youse who can't be bothered clicking on the link, it's a TV show about a cop who's genius brother helps him solve crimes by using maths. First episode appears to be about modelling the movements of a serial rapist to predict where he'll hit next. Seems to me that predicting a person's movements in a city of several million should be about as easy as predicting where a snowflake will land in a howling gale (unless he does something stupid, like commit crimes on the way to work), but perhaps I'm misunderstanding and it actually will make sense.

One thing that sprang to mind when I thought about this is Silence of the Lambs (beware MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD). Do you recall how Lecter commented that the killer's movements were "desperately random"? I don't know if Thomas Harris (author) meant it this way, but I took it to mean that while the police were hoping to see crimes clustered somehow, they were actually surprisingly unclustered, reflecting the fact that people expect randomly chosen points to be far apart, but in fact the chances are a few will fall close together (e.g. shared birthdays).

Erm, sorry for the long rambling post, but any thoughts on this? Anyone plan on watching Numb3rs?

I'm a die-hard Numb3rs fan. Actually, my interest in Numb3ers has been directly responsible for me becoming more interested in math (and desperately trying to dust off the algebra I took in high school and the calculus I took in first year University), and thus indirectly responsible for my finding this conversation! Especially as I like to write fanfiction for the show, I've been learning all sorts of strange math-type-things so that I can have my characters speak believably.

The show does a good job of describing the mathematical concepts Charlie (the mathematician character) uses to help solve the crimes. They have phds from CalTech and other universities as math consultants, and the producers are very committed to keeping the math real and explainable to the audience - background chalkboards are filled with real, relevant math, not random symbols, but the character explains them in a way the audience can deal with. In each episode we get to see the equations involved and there are websites devoted to helping the viewer understand the concepts more deeply if they're interested. There is a yahoogroup where the writer/producers answer questions, and before an episode airs they will tell the group about what math concepts will be used so people who want to can look them up and get familiar before the episode airs. But the show does not demand any mathematical knowledge and is just as enjoyable for the 'innumerate' as those who know one end of a sigma from the other, though the latter probably get to be more smug about it.

The first episode is based on a real-life series of rapes which had gone on for some time unsolved, until a Canadian (yay!) mathematician got the idea for a mathematical method of extrapolating the rapist's approximate 'home base' by finding the pattern in the apparent randomness of his crime scenes. He wrote to the police department responsible, and the rest, as they say, is history - that method is now used by many law-enforcement agencies.

The show has been renewed for a second season. If you're of a less than pure and shining character, the episodes can be downloaded from filesharing programs online, though really, you probably shouldn't. :D


Sorry for the ramble. Just saw the post and had to comment.
Susan

Sounds interesting!