Friday, March 2, 2012

The Film Pi Contains Math Errors


In Darren Aronofsky's 1998 film Pi, there's a scene where Max tells the Kabbalah that he's sure that they've completed their search for a number that is 216 digits long. He tells them,

"It's just a number. I'm sure you've written down every two hundred sixteen digit number. You've translated all of them. You've intoned them all. Haven't you? But what's it gotten you? The number is nothing!"

The problem is, this is impossible. There's 9.9*(10^215) 216-digit numbers. For comparison, recorded human history IN SECONDS is only 60x60x24x6000, about 1.8*(10^11). One billion computers, spitting out one number every second night and day since the dawn of human history, would not have generated every possible 216-digit number by now.

Numerous other math goofs at the IMDB page.