Hollywood’s most built mathematician … Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Min
Math in the Movies
Edna St. Vincent Millay,
quite a poetess in her day,
said "Euclid alone looked on beauty bare"
and she herself was an intellectual cutie fair
so, despite whatever raging hormones in her bonnet,
she wrote the famous poem as a formal sonnet*
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Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare ... about the relationship between science andbeauty. The phrase "beauty bare," in ... ancient builders knew that ropes
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Society's mission is to illuminate the life and writings of Edna St. Vincent Millayand to preserve and interpret the ... The Millay Society. About Us; Trustees ...
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If we now cut to the movies of our day
it's still difficult for artists to portray
the inner working of a great mathematical mind
and appropriate words and images find.
to blend mysteries of Pi and X
with beauty romance and sex
because, whether coming from a Professor or novice,
the most important numbers are at the box office.
HzL
4/6/16
If you want to learn some more about Ramanujan's contribution to mathematics, rent High School Musical. Freeze-frame it at the moment brainy Gabriella Montez challenges her teacher. On the board are two of the equations of the inverse of the constant pi (1/π) that Ramanujan offered in his first paper published in England. "Shouldn't the second equation read 16 over pi?" asks Gabriella. Of course it should.
High School Musical and Formulas for Pi
Toward the end of the first paper that he published in England, famed Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920) offers three series representations of the inverse of the constant pi (1/π).
Amazingly, two of these formulas appear on a blackboard in a scene in the insanely popular Disney movie High School Musical, except that one of the formulas isn't quite right. In the movie, young star Vanessa Anne Hudgens plays brainy Gabriella Montez, who asks her teacher, "Shouldn't the second equation read sixteen over pi." The expression on the board reads 8/π.
"Sixteen over pi," the teacher replies. "That's impossible." She then whips out a calculator and somehow figures out that Gabriella is right. "I stand corrected," she concedes.
The correct version of Ramanujan's series for 1/pi that appears inHigh School Musical.
That bit of dialog near the beginning of the movie helps establish where Gabriella stands as a student at her high school. This movie moment also now figures in a paper published in theAugust-September issue of the American Mathematical Monthly. Nayandeep Deka Baruah, Bruce C. Berndt, and Heng Huat Chanprovide a survey of Ramanujan’s series for 1/π and start off with the formulas that play a part in High School Musical.
An acknowledgement from the authors notes, "We are pleased to thank Si Min Chan and Si Ya Chan for watching High School Musical, thereby making their father aware of Walt Disney Productions' interest in Ramanujan's formulas for 1/π."
The paper originally appeared in a special issue of the Indian journal The Mathematics Student, published in 2007 by the Indian Mathematical Society in its centennial year.
Reference:
Baruah, N.D., B.C. Berndt, and H.H. Chan. 2009. Ramanujan's series for 1/π: A survey. American Mathematical Monthly116(August-September):567-587.
Amazingly, two of these formulas appear on a blackboard in a scene in the insanely popular Disney movie High School Musical, except that one of the formulas isn't quite right. In the movie, young star Vanessa Anne Hudgens plays brainy Gabriella Montez, who asks her teacher, "Shouldn't the second equation read sixteen over pi." The expression on the board reads 8/π.
"Sixteen over pi," the teacher replies. "That's impossible." She then whips out a calculator and somehow figures out that Gabriella is right. "I stand corrected," she concedes.
The correct version of Ramanujan's series for 1/pi that appears inHigh School Musical.
That bit of dialog near the beginning of the movie helps establish where Gabriella stands as a student at her high school. This movie moment also now figures in a paper published in theAugust-September issue of the American Mathematical Monthly. Nayandeep Deka Baruah, Bruce C. Berndt, and Heng Huat Chanprovide a survey of Ramanujan’s series for 1/π and start off with the formulas that play a part in High School Musical.
An acknowledgement from the authors notes, "We are pleased to thank Si Min Chan and Si Ya Chan for watching High School Musical, thereby making their father aware of Walt Disney Productions' interest in Ramanujan's formulas for 1/π."
The paper originally appeared in a special issue of the Indian journal The Mathematics Student, published in 2007 by the Indian Mathematical Society in its centennial year.
Reference:
Baruah, N.D., B.C. Berndt, and H.H. Chan. 2009. Ramanujan's series for 1/π: A survey. American Mathematical Monthly116(August-September):567-587.
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