Strange looking math

[William H.]

I was channel surfing the other day and came across that scene in "Good Will Hunting" where the main character is working on a mysterious looking math problem as seen in the pic below. I was wondering if this is real math or just something that they made up.


http://www.hartnett.nl/hunt_b.jpg

[geni]

Tree diagrams. It's what you use when you wan' to work out the optium way to link points.

[Flatworm]

Graph Theory (http://www.utm.edu/departments/math/graph/)

[Wudang]

What about that line "assign the proton spectrum of somethingamine"? And he draws the chemical structure. I only did chemistry at school and admit my ignorance but "proton spectrum"?
Google isn't much help.

[geni]

Originally posted by Wudang
What about that line "assign the proton spectrum of somethingamine"? And he draws the chemical structure. I only did chemistry at school and admit my ignorance but "proton spectrum"?

Sounds like what I would call an H¹ NMR specturm. The result is basily a series of peaks in groups. These peaks are pretty much unique for each moliclue. I you know what you are doing you can work out the chical structure from the peaks.

[William H.]

Thanks for the answers, now I wish I could read that writing on the top of the chalkboard.

[Tez]

Hey William,

Below is part of an email from the guy who did the math for the movie - we both used to work at U of Toronto, where they shot a lot of it (I lectured for a couple of years in the theatre they use in the movie. The corridor outside the theatre was quite different to the long one they show...).



The graph blackboard was from a research paper. I'll send you a reference. The action of Matt Damon had to be simple (Hollywood actors cannot write on boards, it seems).

Actually, there is a group in Monash University who are looking at all movies with math and trying to figure out what the problems were. I think they hope to present them in a book for high school students. What I was sent was pretty impressive so far.

All of the mathematics is correct except when the young Will overthrows the (in the script, Hungarian professor - presumably Erdos) were I took the liberty of making up a kind of Feynman diagram which the Monash people spotted was not traditional.



I cant find the paper mentioned unfortunately - too long ago. He has a minor speaking role in the bar, I think he got paid more for doing the math...

[DanishDynamite]

Man, I love Graph Theory.

When I signed up for the course during my long departed University years, I had no clue what it was about and the only reason I wanted the course was because it fit into my schedule.

It turned out to be very, very intersting and very usefull as well. In fact, when I did my "exam project" (a project at the very end of your studies lasting half a year or even a full year), I used graph theory to calculate the shortest route for my mobile robot through a random set of obstacles.

Fabulous stuff!

[DanishDynamite]

I am so disappointed that no one has asked me any follow-up questions regarding HOW I used Graph Theory for my project. :( ;)

[sorgoth]

How did you use graph theory for your project, DD?

[T'ai Chi]

I think I can read 'homeomorphically irreducible'.

[Donks]

Hmmm, found some info here (http://wwwhome.math.utwente.nl/~jagersaa/Will.html)