In the pilot from the TV show Numb3rs, “Cal Sci” mathematician Charlie Eppes (David Krumholtz) gets chewed out by his friend, physics professor Larry Fleinhardt (Peter MacNicol), for missing a meeting, in a scene filmed under the sunlit arches of Caltech’s Kerckhoff Laboratories.

Crime and Computation

by Rhonda Hillbery

Leave it to television to work out a way to make a national symbol of nerdiness—mathematics—into something sexy.

Aided by an intense, young, tousle-haired math professor named Charlie Eppes, the creators of Numb3rs, airing Fridays at 10 p.m. (Pacific Time) on CBS, manage to do just that. Yes, the algorithm ace looks dashing as he plummets down a hill in a glorified go-cart he calls an extreme-gravity vehicle. But it’s not just math-flavored machismo. Caltech-caliber calculations course through the episodes, facilitated by professor Gary Lorden ’62, who serves as Numb3rs’s mathematics advisor, and buttressed by scenes shot at the Institute.

Numb3rs, which premiered January 23, covers familiar TV crime-busting territory—foiling bioterrorism, outwitting bank robbers, and stopping a serial rapist. But there’s a twist: FBI Special Agent Don Eppes (Rob Morrow, of Northern Exposure fame) enlists the help of his brilliant younger brother, Charlie (David Krumholtz), a math professor, to solve some of the bureau’s most vexing cases.

Real algorithms help the Eppes brothers uncover a serial rapist’s point of origin when Charlie works out an equation derived from crime scene locations pinpointed on a map. He uses probability, statistics, graph theory, and vector analysis to identify the culprit in a Spanish flu outbreak that strikes Los Angeles. Week after week, viewers see how Charlie uses actual mathematical methods to help crack tough cases.

Meanwhile, an array of numbers, calculations, and equations scribbled on blackboards or overlaid through special effects offers a glimpse into the mind of the math whiz who teaches at “Cal Sci”—the California School of Science and Technology.

Caltech’s imprint on Numb3rs is no accident. The show’s creators—Pasadena residents Cheryl Heuton and Nicolas Falacci—approached the Institute last summer about shooting some scenes on campus, and for help in making the math as realistic as possible. That led the husband-and-wife team to Lorden, Caltech’s executive officer for mathematics, who was soon hired as a consultant.

“I was thrilled to see the show approach Caltech,” says Lorden, who in more than 40 years as an occasional mathematics and statistics consultant had never before been called by Hollywood. One of his first thoughts was of movies such as A Beautiful Mind and Good Will Hunting, whose math segments struck him as unrealistic. But he was more than game to sign on. And he finds it remarkable that in the finished product, Numb3rs depicts “math as not only interesting, but actually cool and sexy. It also does a good job of showing the reality of being stuck on problems, and working and suffering along the way to finding a solution.”

As series mathematics advisor, Professor Gary Lorden provides the “mathematical background” to stories and scripts.

Lorden’s job is to help the scripts credibly utilize bona fide mathematical techniques such as cryptography, combinatorics, number theory, and epidemiology statistics in solving crimes. Besides reviewing scripts for mathematical authenticity, he has also been asked to come up with math or physics concepts and equations that provide the “mathematical background to what some of the characters are doing, saying, or thinking. This could include pictures or things to write on notepads that the camera might see, or stuff that Charlie writes on a blackboard or whiteboard.”

Back on campus in the Sloan Laboratory of Mathematics, in an office adorned with little besides stacks and stacks of papers and math books, Lorden talked about working on the show. “It’s been fun and stimulating, hanging around with the actors and writers on the set, and somewhat glamorous, but it’s a long day.”

Initially, he assisted on story lines involving the epidemiology of human virus transmission, the responses of skyscrapers to earthquakes and strong winds, the aerodynamics of falling human bodies, and predictive models regarding criminal behavior. Also pitching in as needed are fellow Caltech math professors Dinakar Ramakrishnan and Rick Wilson, as well as associate professor Nathan Dunfield.

For their part, Numb3rs producers Heuton and Falacci have repeatedly made the case that the mathematical story lines are more than just a new gimmick for TV. “The idea of a mathematician as a character on a TV show intrigues us because of the way they think, the way they use logic,” Heuton says on the show’s website. “It’s a new kind of detective.”

Adds Falacci, “It’s not just about the crime and solving the mystery. Charlie has a very unique perspective on the world and you want to get to know him.”

In recognition of Caltech’s help on and off the set, the Institute community was invited to a special advance screening of the series pilot at the campus’s Beckman Auditorium on January 10. The nearly full house cheered as Charlie and his trusted colleague, physicist Larry Fleinhardt (Peter MacNicol), reason together in a scene filmed under what appear to be the sunlit arches of the Kerckhoff Laboratories. In the episode, the sweeping pattern of water drops from the sprinkler in Charlie’s father’s backyard inspires one of the show’s trademark mathematical moments, leading Charlie to an algorithmic epiphany that helps nail the perp—a serial rapist who has started murdering his victims.

The Caltech audience ate it up. And some undoubtedly recognized that the scenes in Charlie’s sun-dappled office were actually filmed in the campus office of Moseley Professor of Astronomy Nick Scoville. Conformity to the Caltech culture only stretched so far, however. No sooner had Charlie bolted from his office to keep an appointment than his gorgeous graduate student Amita (Navi Rawat) reverently and tenderly touched the equations that her advisor had scrawled across the blackboard. The Beckman crowd, composed largely of Institute students, erupted in howls of laughter.

In the panel discussion that followed the screening, coproducers Heuton and Falacci explained that they had Caltech firmly in mind for Numb3rs’s university setting. “We had been reading books for years about science and math, and we were interested in the idea of doing a show about a mathematician, which is very difficult to do in commercial television,” Heuton said.

Along with the show’s producers and Lorden, the panel included actor Krumholtz, who cheerfully admitted that he failed high-school algebra twice. “I was a terrible math student. I got zeros on tests—it was bad—I barely passed my third time. I was the kid in class constantly complaining, ‘We should make it an optional class like gym or art class.’” Also on the panel were Rob Morrow and veteran actor Judd Hirsch, who plays the Eppes brothers’ widowed father, Alan, and who bemusedly informed the audience that he holds an authentic BS in physics from City College of New York.

Krumholtz’s star turn as a math genius belies his dismal record as an algebra student. He explained that in preparation for his role he hung around Caltech last fall, “wandering the hallways and campus for two to three weeks,” to soak up the academic ambiance. To plumb character motivation he talked to a real-life youthful math guy, Caltech’s 30-year-old professor Dunfield.

In a phone interview shortly after the show’s television debut Dunfield recalled spending about an hour with Krumholtz, who plays 29-year-old Charlie. “He wanted to know what it’s like to do mathematics and work in academia, what types of things his character would likely be concerned about, like tenure or other issues.”

The professor, who was so un-starstruck that he hadn’t even made a point of watching the premiere, added, “He wanted to know, why would somebody choose to become a mathematics professor. Would they have to love math?” What was his response? The professor said he does not recall.

Graduate student David Grynkiewicz worked as a hand double in early Numb3rs episodes. David Krumholtz as Charlie grapples with an equation in a scene filmed in Caltech astronomy professor Nick Scoville’s office.

A touch of the TV spotlight has also fallen on one of Professor Wilson’s graduate students, David Grynkiewicz. “The producers thought Krumholtz would have trouble writing some of the complicated numerical expressions, and my hand looks similar to his,” said Grynkiewicz, who is studying combinatorics. During a shooting period when Lorden was unavailable, he spent more than 30 hours standing in as both hand-double and math advisor.

Some of that time was spent working in a rented Los Angeles house, a 1909 California Craftsman, where the Eppes-at-home scenes are filmed. Grynkiewicz says that he churned out enough material to fill the 17 blackboards that Charlie frantically covers with equations during the show’s second episode. Since blanketing the blackboards required more math than was expected, the grad student had to come up with some of his own material. “Thankfully, the script called for combinatorics.”

On those occasions when Charlie was called upon to write his own equations, “I tried to show David Krumholtz how a mathematician would do it,” said Grynkiewicz. “It has to be quick and emphatic.” He didn’t think his hand would be featured in many future episodes, however. The producers, he said, figured that the versatile Krumholtz would soon be able to do some of his own close-up scribbling and that production artists could do the rest.

As for the Caltech campus, it will appear in subsequent shows, but strict Institute policies permit filming only on weekends and when school is not in session. At the Caltech premiere, the news that USC and other campuses will also stand in for “Cal Sci” drew a predictable shudder from the Beckman crowd.

In fact, the Institute came extremely close to being identified as Charlie’s university, according to Caltech’s public events director Denise Nelson Nash. The stumbling block was that the network officials were unwilling to allow the Institute script review.

“CBS wanted to have complete creative control, which was fine with us, as long as there were no illegal or illicit relationships or activities depicted involving Caltech people.” But the network decided against allowing even that level of oversight, Nelson Nash said.

Producers Heuton and Falacci say that CBS was “wildly enthusiastic” about taking a chance on Numb3rs, whose ultimate fate will reside in, well, numbers. Cannily scheduled to debut immediately after the American Football Conference Championship game, the pilot attracted 25 million viewers, placing in the top 10 that week. The show has slipped a bit since then, but has performed well enough to convince CBS to order more episodes. Adding to the cachet and buzz surrounding the series is the involvement of brothers Ridley and Tony Scott as executive producers. Both are known for directing action movies: Ridley’s filmography includes Black Hawk Down, Gladiator, and Alien, while Tony’s list includes Spy Game, Crimson Tide, and Days of Thunder.

Meanwhile, Numb3rs has garnered lively, albeit mixed reviews. Newsweek called it “a gripping hour of TV with unexpected shades of character, crisp acting, and enough gee-wizardry to excite anyone with even a quark of scientific curiosity.” Tom Shales of the Washington Post was less enthusiastic, declaring, “No matter how often we’re told how unbearably fascinating it all is, it isn’t. It’s more likely to trigger horrifying flashbacks of algebra class.”

Critical commentary aside, the CBS team behind Numb3rs clearly hopes that dazzling mathematics will do for their series what forensics has done for CBS’s immensely successful CSI franchise—secure a large and loyal following among viewers with a proven appetite for crime dramas.

Whatever the show’s outcome, Lorden admits that the attention should be very flattering to mathematicians everywhere. But he figures that more than flattery is at work here.

“I think we are in uncharted territory in that I don’t think there’s been a commercial prime-time TV series that has tried to apply mathematics in an integral way. The producers of Numb3rs have said on many occasions that Caltech is the model they are thinking of. I think that it’s an attractive thing. I know that it’s good for Caltech.”

Lorden adds that he, for one, is impressed by Numb3rs’s success in making mathematics appear dynamic and relevant, rather than like some stodgy old relic. “Contrary to what most people think, as a field of study, mathematics is not all worked out. Many of the most interesting problems are yet to be solved. I think Numb3rs portrays that very well.”