Ever seen the CBS TV show Numb3rs? I saw the first two episodes awhile back, and just watched the last half of another in reruns. It’s a pretty good cop/crime show, made a little more unique than most by the addition of having a mathematical prodigy as one of the main characters.
I’m too lazy to link all the various sites you could find about the show, so if you’re interested you can just go here.
The math in the show is based on the real deal; there are a number of mathematicians who act as consultants for the show. Now, having to construct crimes which lend themselves to the application of some mathematical pattern-finding to solve them might prove a difficult twist to maintain; hopefully the show won’t collapse under the weight of its own cleverness. For example, tonights episode was about a supposed serial sniper, which turned out to actually be a series of copycat snipers; explained as an example of viral spread of a sniping meme. One character even made a reference to Malcolm Gladwell, and “The Tipping Point.” Hm. Neat, but that’s stretching things a little far for me.
Regardless of all that, the show has strong writing for a prime time TV series, and I’d say it’s definitely better than the various CSI crap-fests^H^H^H^H series ruling the ratings right now.
