One More Slice of Pi

Okay, I wrote about p back on March 14th and again in April, when I said I had no intention of making this a monthly thing.

In my own defense, even if I am bending my own rule, this one isn’t strictly about math or geometry.  It may not  even have much of anything to do with intelligent thought.

Shown  at the Sundance Film Festival (but, as far as I can tell, not winning anything)  p was the story of a young mathematician and his search for the universal symbol that would explain the meaning of life.  Dialogue is in English, Hebrew, and (apparently) Greek.

According to reviewers, the film is full of goofs, among them:

Factual errors: The long string of digits representing pi in the opening of the movie is incorrect starting in the ninth decimal place.

Factual errors: The logic followed by the Kabbalists with respect to Hebrew numerology is flawed. First, there are no zeroes in the Hebrew numerological system. Second, in Hebrew numerology, the different letters have values that vary in the number of digits (the values range from 1 to 400, with only the first 9 letters having single-digit values.) Therefore, it is impossible to create a specific 216-letter-word in Hebrew given a 216-digit-number with zeroes in it. It has been argued that the Kabbalists do not use Hebrew numbers to decipher the code, rather, they use the modern western number system to correlate the 216 character name to each Hebrew letter. Nevertheless, the premise seems to be muddled, at best, if not completely flawed.

Revealing mistakes: In different takes the "Wall-Street" numbers on the display panel are the same, the numbers never really change and it is more or less always the same stocks, no matter what time it is.

Incorrectly regarded as goofs: When Max is in the coffee shop, the cream container he opens has a McDonald's logo. It's a cheesy enough place that they were probably ripped off.

A look at the film’s Trailer was more than enough for me, but if you have seen it (or see it in the future) let me know what you think.

For my money, I believe that this film may have been the reason that the Sundance Festival moved in August of  ‘98 from Park City, Utah to South Park in the episode titled Chef's Chocolate Salty Balls!