Have you ever watched a movie that made you want to head to the bookstore? I’ve run into a few like that and I figured why not talk about one such movie… Pi (or π if you prefer).
The movie is about a mathematician who believes he has stumbled upon pattern of numbers that can be found everywhere in nature. It’s an oldie in black and white. Okay, so 1998 isn’t that old but it is in b/w. Here is a quote from the main character relating to his attempt at finding this pattern.
11:15.
Restate my assumptions:
1. Mathematics is the language of nature.
2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers.
3. If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature.
Evidence:
The cycling of disease epidemics; the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile. So, what about the stock market? The universe of numbers that represents the global economy. Millions of hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming with life. An organism. A natural organism.
My hypothesis:
Within the stock market, there is a pattern as well… Right in front of me… hiding behind the numbers. Always has been.
As the movie goes, his discovery gets him into things a little deeper than he wants to be when more than one other group of people wants what they think he knows. I don’t like spoilers so I will end my pseudo review right there. It’s a good movie so long as you can manage the fact that it is a movie and not a documentary.
As for making me want to head out to the bookstore… I did end up buying a couple of books on mathematical theory. Not exactly the most exciting thing I’ve ever read but interest boosted by the movie was enough to help me push through the books.
Because of my on again off again relationship with formal education, I’ve only had one 200 level college math course (and nothing higher). At the time it wasn’t my cup of tea because I didn’t see the point. The teaching assistant in charge of our class couldn’t explain a real world application for what we were learning. Combine that with me catching mono that semester and I mostly called that class quits with the exception of showing up to midterms and finals.
Oh, and before I completely forget… Here is the extended trailer for the movie:
