Pi and A Beautiful Mind

I had never seen either Pi or A Beautiful Mind before this class, and I thought they were very appropriately paired together. There are many similarities in the lives and work of Max and the fictionalized John Nash. Most obviously, they were both crazy mathematicians. There have been many blog posts, and collaborative papers about crazy mathematicians in literature and pop culture, but personally, I don’t believe it was the math that drove either one of these men crazy. My mom always told me (and my mom is always right) that all things are okay in moderation, and that an excess of any given thing will often cause problems. Both John and Max were obsessed with their mathematical work and neglected other aspects of their lives. I believe that this sort of obsessive behavior in any field is sure to cause mental sickness. I also found it interesting that both John Nash and Max were working on mathematical problems concerning the economy. Math is relevant everywhere, but it is interesting that these two men chose to use their knowledge of math in the economy. Lastly, both men were perceived by society as geniuses for their work. Max was approached by Wall Street executives to help decipher a pattern in the stock market while John Nash received the Nobel Prize. I enjoyed watching both movies (minus the part where Max drilled a hole in his brain) and it’s always fun to see movies about a subject that you are personally interested in.

Happily Ever After? Part II

The ending of Pi shows Max ridding his mind of the evils of mathematics with a drill to his temple. Although this can't be taken literally, it makes me wonder if he was truly happy after everything was said and done. His whole life, or the span of time we could witness in the film, revolved around mathematics. Could someone really be at ease if they lose the one thing they're truly passionate about?

One part of the ending that we didn't talk about in class that I feel is relevant is the scene where the bratty little neighbor asks Max to solve some equations and he fails to come up with answers. Did Max not know the solutions or did he just choose not to answer?

Overall, I believe that Max is still a deeply troubled person. The erratic behavior that he displays could easily be triggered by other events, possibly those that contain the intricate patterns that math contains. I'm still rather confused as to what scenes in the film actually occurred and what were nothing more than dreams. For instance, the battle between money and religion could be interpreted as literal, or as simply a nightmare or inner conflict. However, the appeal of this movie, to me, is that it is up for so many different interpretations.

What is your interpretation?

Thoughts on Pi (not the number... I don't want to have a stroke or go insane)

Max is obsessed with figuring out what the 216 digit number's significance is. Towards the end, we find out that Max's obsession was not driven by materialistic or spiritual reasons. If he was driven by materialistic reasons, then he would have gladly cooperated with the Wall Street people and would have exploited the stock market for money. If he was driven by spiritual reasons, then he would have cooperated with the Jews. So what was he driven by? A strong passion for problem solving and pattern searching? His insanity? It is sort of the chicken and the egg thing... which came first: his insanity or his obsession with the number?

I tend to think that the conversation that Max has with Sol earlier in the film was Sol trying to protect Max from going down a similar road that he had. I think Sol says "you can find patterns anywhere if you are looking for them" in order to convince Max that this 216 digit number is nothing. But we see by Sol's second stroke and consequent death that Sol didn't really believe that this number is insignificant. In fact Sol himself had some sort of obsession with the number. All of this makes me think that it is the math that is making the madness, not the madness making the math.

I still don't know what to make of the ending. Maybe it is a happy ending because the madness had left. Similar to D-503 in We, Max has rid himself of the sickness but has also sacrificed his chance to find purpose and meaning. Then again, maybe none of that really happened.

Faith in Numbers

In both Pi and We we have two protagonists who live their lives based on the logic and rationality of numbers. Yet in the both stories the characters both have faith in some unquantifiable quality that governs the world (and the universe).

In We, D-503 has unquestionable faith in the benevolent Benefactor and the One State. From D-503’s writings we get the sense that the Benefactor is the epitome of logic and rationality but in all realistic probability this probably not the case. However, D-503 and the rest of the citizens of the One State seems too blind to see it.

In Pi, Max has faith in patterns. Everything in the universe has some pattern. In his blind faith in his belief he discounts ideas of any sort of spontaneity or randomness. How can someone with such a high ability to rationalize things believe that there are no anamolies in existence? On the other hand, perhaps he is right.

To me it seems that both concepts lead to the idea of whether or not people have free will or not, a universal question that no one seems to have the answer to. If life is We and everything is ran by a system and order then people no longer become people but simply parts of a machine. Machine parts have no choice in their functions. If life is Pi then people have no free will but are simply enacting the patterns upon patterns set in motion at the beginning of time. Every person born, grow, wilt, die, born, grow, wilt, die – forever until the pattern ends.

The First Slice of Pi

I hadn’t seen Pi before so I didn’t know what to expect. So far it’s definitely a story of a crazed mathematician, a theme that seems common in a lot of literature. Hopefully we will find out why authors tend to use mathematicians in this context in our upcoming research projects.

There were a lot of things I like about Pi so far, but the main thing that jumped out at me is that Max was trying to figure out the pattern behind the stock market if there even is one. Individual consumer decisions all around the world affect the stock market so I think by trying to solve its algorithm he is subsequently trying to figure out how the world works.

One of the other things I thought about in my spare time is how the color (black & white) and the music was affecting the way I was seeing the movie. I think the black and white gives the movie some fantastical quality that I don’t think would be the same if it were in color and the electronica gives it a sort of frantic feeling. Also someone (I can’t remember who, sorry) mentioned that his computer crashed because of an ant or spider and thought it could’ve been a metaphor for a computer bug. I wondered if that was done by the film maker on purpose and if so, would there be more in the following portions of the film.

Oh and the Hebrew math thing, with the mother, father, child thing was really interesting. I don’t know anything about Hebrew at all. Does anyone have more information on this? Anyhow, those were some of my initial thoughts on Pi. I’m interested in seeing what happens next.

Max and D-503

When watching Pi in class, I noticed a few interesting parallels between D-503 from We and Max from the film. Both characters are troubled by irrationality and disorder. D-503 is agitated by even the thought of imaginary numbers, namely the square root of negative one. Max is adamant that patterns lie behind absolutely everything. His faith in this concept is so strong that he drives himself crazy working to discover underlying patterns in things that appear rather random. Neither character believes in a God by our popular definition. D-503 does believe in the Benefactor who Zamyatin depicts as a God-like figure to the One State, however, little faith is required in this belief. The Benefactor is a tangible person whom the One Staters see on Election Day. D-503 does not believe in a God beyond his society, and this sort of faith would be difficult for him as God is much more enigmatic than his dreaded square root of negative one. Max was raised Jewish but no longer practices any faith. His agnosticism seems possibly counterintuitive since he is constantly looking for patterns and believes everything is controlled by something greater, specifically mathematics. Both characters are mathematicians who are removed from society by their individual obsessions, Max’s being patterns and D-503’s being the world beyond the Green Wall.