February 24, 2005
The Caltech-caliber calculations seen in Numb3rs, airing Fridays at 10 p.m. on CBS, are aided by professor and Caltech alum Gary Lorden, BS ’62, who serves as Numb3rs’s mathematics advisor, and by scenes actually shot at the Institute.
Numb3rs, which premiered January 23, covers familiar TV crime-busting territory—foiling bioterrorism, outwitting bank robbers, stopping a serial rapist—but with a twist: FBI Special Agent Don Eppes (Rob Morrow, of Northern Exposure fame) enlists the help of his brilliant younger brother, Charlie (David Krumholtz), a math professor, to solve some of the bureau’s most vexing cases.
Week after week, viewers see how Charlie uses actual mathematical methods to help crack tough cases.
Meanwhile, an array of numbers, calculations, and equations scribbled on blackboards or overlaid through special effects offers a glimpse into the mind of the math whiz who teaches at “Cal Sci”—the California School of Science and Technology. Caltech’s imprint on Numb3rs is no accident. The show’s creators—Pasadena residents Cheryl Heuton and Nicolas Falacci—approached the Institute last summer about shooting some scenes on campus, and for help in making the math as realistic as possible. That led the husband-and-wife team to Lorden, Caltech’s executive officer for mathematics, who was soon hired as a consultant.
“I was thrilled to see the show approach Caltech,” says Lorden. He finds it remarkable that in the finished product, Numb3rs depicts “math as not only interesting, but actually cool and sexy. It also does a good job of showing the reality of being stuck on problems, and working and suffering along the way to finding a solution.”
Lorden’s job is to help the scripts credibly utilize bona fide mathematical techniques such as cryptography, combinatorics, number theory, and epidemiology statistics in solving crimes. Besides reviewing scripts for mathematical authenticity, he has also been asked to come up with math or physics concepts and equations that provide the “mathematical background to what some of the characters are doing, saying, or thinking. This could include pictures or things to write in notepads that the camera might see, or stuff that Charlie writes on a blackboard or whiteboard.”
He also has assisted by writing equations as needed, both in campus shoots and at a downtown Los Angeles studio where the FBI-office scenes are filmed. “It’s been fun and stimulating, hanging around with the actors and writers on the set, and somewhat glamorous, but it’s a long day,” Lorden says. Initially, he assisted on story lines involving the epidemiology of human virus transmission, the responses of skyscrapers to earthquakes and strong winds, the aerodynamics of falling human bodies, and predictive models regarding criminal behavior. Also pitching in as needed are math professors Dinarkar Ramakrishnan and Rick Wilson, as well as associate professor Nathan Dunfield.
A touch of the TV spotlight has also fallen on one of Wilson’s graduate students, David Grynkiewicz. “The producers thought David Krumholtz would have trouble writing some of the complicated numerical expressions, and my hand looks similar to his,” says Grynkiewicz, who is studying combinatorics. During a shooting period when Lorden was unavailable, he spent more than 30 hours standing in as both hand-double and math advisor.
The Institute came close to being identified as Charlie’s university, according to Caltech public events director Denise Nelson Nash. The stumbling block was that network officials were unwilling to allow the Institute script review.
“CBS wanted to have complete creative control, which was fine with us, as long as there were no illegal or illicit relationships or activities depicted involving Caltech people.” But the network decided against allowing even that level of oversight, Nelson Nash said.
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