Transcript Math in the Movies and TV shows

Can you figure out the movie title?
TEACHING CALCULUS USING
MOVIES AND TELEVISION
SHOWS
Elana Reiser
St. Joseph’s College, NY
[email protected]
Solution
Snakes on a Plane!
Example 1: Infinity
What is up with infinity?
Is infinity a number?
What is ∞+1?
What about 2 ∙∞?
What about ∞ ∙∞?

.
Still not convinced?

Infinity divided by infinity doesn’t equal one
 Assume
it does
FAIL
Revenge
It gets weirder

There is more than one kind of infinity
 Countably
infinite
 Integers
 Uncountable
 Real
numbers between 0 and 1
Activity
True or False:
There are more numbers between 0
and 2 than
there are between 0 and 1.
Solution
FALSE
There are the same amount of numbers
between 0 and 1 as there are between 0 and 2
The Fault in Our Stars
Example 2: Zeno’s Paradox
History

Zeno of Elea
Greek
philosopher
Wrote book of paradoxes
According to Aristotle, invented style of
debate where one person presents an
idea and another reduces idea to
absurdity
earliest
form of proof by contradiction
History

IQ
Activity

Activity

Example 3: Limits
Mean Girls
The Problem
Activity
In level of increasing difficulty
 Plot function and explain why limit DNE
 Plug in values to right and left of zero to explain
 Evaluate using L’Hopital’s Rule
 If the minus sign between natural log and sine term
changed to dot for multiplication the answer is -1
2
applications of L’Hopital’s Rule with product rule and
quotient rule
Activity

First L’Hopital’s
Activity

Second L’Hopital’s with product rule and quotient rule
Example 4: Derivative
The Simpsons
Activity

Example 5: Area of Ellipse
Rushmore
Rushmore
Rushmore
True Story
Something similar happened to George
Dantzig
 As graduate student at Berkeley arrived
late to class and saw problems written on
board
 handed in correct solutions
 later found out they were actually two
famous unsolved problems in the field of
statistics

Activity
Example 6: Geometric Progressions
The Big Bang Theory
Activity
Given data
n
0
1
2
3
Y (days)
27
2
3 hours
20 minutes
n
0
1
2
3
Y (days)
27
2.25
.1875
(4.5 hours)
.015625
(22.5 minutes)
Is there a better model?
Activity

n
0
1
2
3
Y (days)
27
2
.148
(3.5 hours)
.01097
(15.8 minutes)
Questions?

[email protected]