Sherlock Holmes averts world war using mathematics

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2012/01/the-mathematics-behind-sherlock-holmes.html

by zeratul • 15 years ago

69 24 15 years ago

jiggy20112• 15 years ago

I love clever touches like this in TV and films. When referencing for the purposes of a storyline niche topics such as CS , Maths or Physics I always feel that whilst writers need to make their story accessible to people who are not savvy in these topics they should always stay as true as possible to the field itself and not insult the intelligence of people who are familiar with these things.

I get quite annoyed when people put "hacking" scenes into films that are filled with nothing but nonsense. Usually legitimate technical jargon that is thrown together in ways that don't make sense.

Does anybody have any opinions of the modern Sherlock remakes that have appeared on the BBC recently?

jshort• 15 years ago

I find it most annoying when a computer is used in basically any TV show or movie. The actors always look to just be tapping on the keys at random, often hitting completely irrelevant keys to the task at hand. It doesn't ruin the scene for me but it does not make it as good as it can be. The attention to detail in this film made it more enjoyable.

extension• 15 years ago

Sadly, they overlooked the detail that most people in Victorian England actually didn't know kung-fu.

aorshan2• 15 years ago

Did you ever notice that in movies, people almost never use a mouse? That's always bothered me.

endtime• 15 years ago

I think Trinity actually uses nmap in one of the Matrix movies...

FuzzyDunlop• 15 years ago

Extending this to the representation of current technology in TV and film, Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror[1] (particularly the first of the series) has, in my opinion, the most accurate depiction of it I've ever seen.

[1] http://www.channel4.com/programmes/black-mirror/4od http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_(TV_series)

kghose3• 15 years ago

I really liked the series "Sherlock" with Benedict Cumberbatch(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_%28TV_series%29).

For the older ones I thought the Jeremy Brett ones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes_%281984_TV_seri...) were very good.

siegecraft2• 15 years ago

The most recent one with Benedict Cumberbatch (what a name) is great (the second series just started a week ago).

zeratul• 15 years ago

> I love clever touches like this in TV and films.

Me too, "Contagion" movie hired Dr. W. Ian Lipkin who is a specialist in molecular methods for pathogen discovery: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/09/contagi...

aorshan2• 15 years ago

I actually just finished watching the first two episodes of the second season. It is simply fantastic.

pilom• 15 years ago

Check out http://thebigblogtheory.wordpress.com/ The technical adviser for the TV show The Big Bang Theory does a weekly blog post about the science and tech behind each episode.

whatusername• 15 years ago

For anyone who hasn't seen it -- there's a great writeup on some of the tech portions in the new Tron movie here: http://jtnimoy.net/?q=178

kghose3• 15 years ago

If you like math fun and movies I would recommend the series "Numbers" and the movie "A beautiful mind" as a dramatic portrayal of paranoia that some famous mathematicians have developed.

(The linked article is a bit light and in the end not so interesting for me, unfortunately.)

bitwize• 15 years ago

Numb3rs is, to me, a grown-up version of Mathnet, the math-heavy police procedural parody that accompanied each episode of Square One TV (a children's educational program oriented toward mathematics that aired on PBS in the 80s and 90s).

The difference is, on Mathnet there are extended scenes of the characters actually doing math. That was the attractant for me...

kghose3• 15 years ago

Thanks for pointing me to that!

(https://www.google.com/search?tbm=vid&hl=en&source=h...)

keenerd• 15 years ago

I can only hope that some day Square One will air again. That show was crucial to me as a kid.

pork• 15 years ago

Numb3rs, to me, is a parody of math. You can argue whether it's a disservice to math or not when it's presented as a magical tool obfuscated by senseless jargon and technical term soup, which is what I found Numb3rs to be (and I'm a mathematician). It's sort of like the "zoom in on B3 and enhance" of math.

Dove• 15 years ago

Numb3rs is, to me, a grown-up version of Mathnet,

Whereas Beautiful Mind is spectacularly accurate. I used to make a game with other grad students in the math department, identifying what was on the blackboards in the background. It was always real math.

siegecraft2• 15 years ago

eh..I was hoping this was related to the BBC show Sherlock

Sherlock Holmes averts world war using mathematics

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