Medicare For All

Movie Monday

I watched the same movie twice this weekend. OK, I know that I’ve seen Pirates 3 more times than is healthy but this movie really necessitated at least two viewings. Come to think of it, most movies do. The first to watch without a clue as to what is going to happen but hopefully with a clue as to what it going on. The second with experience and knowledge so you can cross the T’s and dot the I’s. This movie is in Spanish with English subtitles which added another reason for two viewing.

First, before I tell you about this twice-watched movie, let me tell you about Goldbach’s conjecture. Goldbach was a 18th century Prussian mathematician who had a couple of conjectures. A conjecture is an educated guess, a speculation, a good hunch. Here is Goldbach's most famous:

Any even number greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two prime numbers.

Like 12, which is the sum of 7 + 5. Or 838 which is 827 + 11. And on and on. Now, since numbers are infinite this conjecture can’t be proven in a traditional way, though computers are taking us closer to infinite and beyond....... So it will probably have to be proven true in an nontraditional way. But on the movie which gives truth to the saying: Math is your friend.

Fermat’s Room (2007)

Oh-oh! I may have to digress again because are you wondering who is this Fermat. Fermat is listed as a 17th century amateur mathematician who was on par with Pascal and Descartes. Now Fermat had a lot of theorems but it was his last which is the most famous and eluded proof until just a few years ago when Andrew Wiles of Princeton University solved it.

Now that’s all I’m going to tell you about Fermat because I don’t understand his work at all. On the movie, for real this time.

As the opening credits roll, a black gloved hand is arranging doll house sized furniture in an doll house room. Then the movie starts with a young mathematician ("Galois") entertaining some pretty girls with examples of Goldbach's conjecture. We learn fast that he’s a celebrity to them since he has solved the conjecture; this fact has been publicized in the press; and he soon will be presenting a paper on the subject.

The first inkling of trouble is when he is summoned back to his dorm room to see that it has been vandalized and his computer and all his notes destroyed. The paper presentation will have to wait.

Next scene: a depressed mathematician playing chess with his physician. He says he had been contemplating suicide but then remembered he had this date to play chess. The plot advances as he shows the MD an invitation to solve a mathematical problem. Those who solve it will be invited to a dinner and night of mathematical enigmas. The invitation is signed “Fermat.”

Only four people solve the problem: the two mentioned above, a young woman and an inventor. All are given famous mathematical names for anonymity: Pascal, Hilbert, Olivia, Galois and all finally arrive together at a grain warehouse which contains deep inside it, that’s right, a full-sized room identical to the one we saw being furnished in doll-house size at the beginning.

And so we enter into the spooky world of locked room/creepy old house mysteries but with a twist: This room is set up with four hydraulic presses pressing in. Every few minutes, our “heros” get math enigmas to solve long distance on a PDA in the room. They have one minute to solve them. A wrong answer or a late answer causes the presses to shrink the room a little each time. Oh, did I mention the door is locked?

The rest of the movie has the our heroes frantically working out math problems while attempting to stop the room from shrinking and trying to figure out why this is all happening to them.

This is a very intriguing movie. You’ve probably seen a variation of the plot before but the math is real and an important twist. It’s no McGuffin (a device which moves the plot along and then is of no importance) since if they don’t answer those problems in a timely fashion, they die.

Is there a way out of the room? Is there a connection between these people? How are their math names important? Will the director take pity and give us the explanations? Will we have a happy ending? You’ll get no answers from me but watch the movie. You won’t be disappointed.

And finally, one enigma from the movie. It’s a classic. See if you can solve it.

A candy merchant receives 3 opaque boxes. One box contains mint candies, another contains anise candies, and the last box contains a mixture of mint and anise. The boxes are labeled Mint, Anise, and Mixed. All of the boxes are labeled incorrectly. What is the minimum number of candies the merchant will have to sample to correctly label each box?

(This is one of those problems where you slap your forehead and say: How could I have missed this? if you don't get it.)