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There's a website and a companion book to it about bad physics in movies, called "Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics".

Similar issues may exist about mathematics: What are the differences between movie mathematics an real mathematics? What are the misconceptions about the nature of mathematics and mathematicians which may be conveyed to the audience via movies? And so on.

Is there any website, article or book dealing with such issues about mathematics and movies?

Thanks.

Willie Wong
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Behzad
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    Related Huff post article – The Chaz 2.0 Jan 06 '14 at 18:36
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    Well, finding all homeomorphically irreducible trees of size $10$ certainly wouldn't take an MIT professor 2 years to do... – ocg Jan 06 '14 at 18:40
  • @JulienGodawatta Is it theme of a movie? What movie? – Behzad Jan 06 '14 at 18:41
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    Julien refers to good will hunting. – davidlowryduda Jan 06 '14 at 18:43
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    I remember a particularly painful line in "cube" where everybody is amazed that the autist prodigy can tell that 258 is not prime in 3 seconds.... – Albert Jan 06 '14 at 18:43
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    @Behzad: Lets just say you have a lot of material to work with! See: http://www.math.harvard.edu/~knill/mathmovies/ and http://www.qedcat.com/moviemath/ – Amzoti Jan 06 '14 at 18:44
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    @Glougloubarbaki. Yeah, that's really ridiculous: I can't imagine anyone needing more than 2 seconds to see that 258 is not prime, since it is divisible by 43. – Georges Elencwajg Jan 06 '14 at 20:58
  • It's My Turn has a pretty good explanation of the snake lemma... followed by hilariously stupid discussion. It's like their consultant just up and left halfway through the scene. Or just trolled the hell out of them. YouTube link – tomasz Jan 07 '14 at 09:53
  • $258$ is even $>2$. – Felix Marin Mar 23 '14 at 02:17
  • Raising Genius (whose titular character played another kind of "genius" in commercials...) involves a kid who solved his great math problem after being inspired by the nature of how the girl next door's boobs bounce on the trampoline. Icing being said girl is Danica McKellar (of Kiss My Math fame). Seriously an awful, terrible, no-good movie. Wishing it upon my worst enemy. – anon Mar 23 '14 at 02:28
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    If a book is wanted, https://www.booktopia.com.au/math-goes-to-the-movies-burkard-and-ross-marty-polster/book/9781421404844.html is Math Goes to the Movies, by Burkard Polster and Marty Ross. It's related to the qedcat site a few comments earlier. – Gerry Myerson Oct 18 '20 at 00:57

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I remember watching The fault in our stars which is a great movie, but the wrong math at a very emotional scene, ruined it for me. Shailene Woodley (who has cancer) says this to his boyfriend who also has cancer-

“I am not gonna talk about our love story because I can't. So, Instead I am gonna talk about maths. I am not a mathematician but I do know this. There are infinite numbers between $0$ and $1$. There's $.1$ and $.12$ and $.112$ and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between $0$ and $2$, or between $0$ and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”

A very good movie but , just saying, if you are not a mathematician, infinities are the first thing you should avoid.

Bhaskar Vashishth
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    Partially justified in that she never actually asked the "writer she used to like" for details, so there's no reason to expect her to know the details of what was meant. – Akiva Weinberger Aug 25 '15 at 14:58
  • I read the book in high school, and although I saw the bad math, I didn’t think it “ruined the scene” for me. The idea of infinity (or the very large) helps put things in life into perspective, and still makes for a very emotional scene, spoken by Shailene. – Benjamin Wang Feb 18 '21 at 02:19
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? Maybe this one : Kentucky Math with Pa and Ma Kettle! .
Or rather this one: Alternative Math | Short Film .

Han de Bruijn
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Tv Tropes has a page dedicated to bad math in media (not only movies).

Célio Augusto
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