The Man Who Knew Infinity

Last night I attended "The Man Who Knew Infinity" a film based on the real life story of Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan FRS, who was admitted to Trinity College at Cambridge University in 1914. A Film Trailer is available.

Dev Patel gives a believable portrayal of a mathematical genius not recognized, Devika Bhise as his devoted but neglected wife and Arundhati Nag as an Indian mother. These relatively unknown actors succeed in being noticed alongside the star power of the movie. Jeremy Irons as Professor Hardy made me think of this as Brideshead Revisited (Revisited), while Stephen Fry as Sir Francis Spring seemed to be reprising his Black-adder role and Kevin McNally as Major MacMahon looked like he was in Dad's Army. But Jeremy Northam steals the show as "Berty" (Bertrand Russell).

The India and Cambridge of the 1914 are lovingly reproduced, with perhaps a little too much sentimentality. India looks too clean, with too many elephants and not enough people. The Cambridge dons are a little too nice.

Filmed on location a Trinity College Cambridge, I was able to relate to the strictures of not walking on the grass (I was invited to by one of the fellows) and the gossip at high table (the food is not that bad).

This film manages to make mathematics interesting (just), but perhaps outstays its welcome and could do with 20 minutes being cut out. The film is based on the book "The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan" by Robert Kanigel (1991).

The Man Who Knew Infinity is on now in cinemas across Australia. My ticket was courtesy of  Nixco.


ps: If visiting Cambridge and not having an academic connection, you can stay in a college through University Rooms.

Editing Educational Video

Greetings from the video editing labs at the Australian National University, where Dr Judy-anne Osborn, Visiting Fellow, Centre for Mathematics and Its Applications, Mathematical Sciences Institute, is editing her educational mathematics video.

One of the first issues which came up is the very large size of the video files. This makes it difficult to copy them from computer to computer so that several people can work on the project at the same time. Another issue is which software to use. Simple applications like Apple iMovie may not have fine enough details.

Animation for Education

Greetings from the Mathematical Sciences Institute (MSI) at the Austrlaian National Unviersity where Cameron Chamberlain from ANU School of Art, is presenting an Introduction to Animation. This is part of a project to teach educational film making to mathematicians, next week's workshop is on interviewing (27 May 2011).

Cameron pointed out that even the most sophisticated computer based animation still depends on the principles of live film making and animation. A an example, he used Disney's 12 principles, as documented in The ILLUSION OF LIFE: DISNEY ANIMATION (by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, 1995).

He also recommended The Animator's Survival Kit, Expanded Edition: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators (by Richard Williams).

This may not seem relevant to teaching mathematics, but the conventions of animated film, film and live performance can be applied to make appealing educational animation.

People respond to animated objects with personality. This does not require realism, as Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass point out in "The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places" (Cambridge University Press, 1996), research shows that people were very accepting on simple computer animations.

The Wikipedia has a list of 2D and 3D open source animation software. Cameron commented that Blender was the most usable.

Cameron gave rhe example of a mathematics related, award winning file: The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics. My favourite animation along these lines (pun intended) is Airport by Iain Anderson (2005), made using airport signs.

ps: Cameron at one point said "Turn it Up to Twelve", which I assume is a pop culture reference to This Is Spinal Tap.

Statistics and Mathematics Movie Making Information Session

A Statistics and Mathematics Movie Making Information Session will be held 1pm to 2pm, 23 February 2011, in room PM1012 of the PAP Moran Building, Austrlaian National Unviersity, Centre for Mathematics and Its Applications. The session is free and anyone interested in making educational videos for maths and stats is welcome to attend.

ANU-based award winning film-maker Bobby Cerini, as well as Statisticians, Mathematicians and students from the Mathematical Sciences Institute at ANU and elsewhere will be speaking. Everyone attending will be welcome to contribute ideas. Snacks and drinks will be provided.

Directions: To get to PM1012, enter the John Dedman Maths Building 27 near reception, go up one flight of stairs, across the glass walkway into the PAP Moran Building, walk along the corridor to where it turns left, turn left with the corridor and room PM1012 is the first door on the right.

More dtails are avialable from Dr Judy-anne Osborn, Visiting Fellow, Centre for Mathematics and Its Applications, Mathematical Sciences Institute, Australian National University.

Beautiful Mind Applied to Wireless Auctions

The recent showing of the film "A Beautiful Mind" prompted me to read the book it is based on "A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash " by Sylvia Nasar. The book at 459 pages, with 44 pages of end notes, and extensive bibliography and index is not a novelisation of the film but a carefully researched biography.

This is also a book about the politics of academia, covering university and researchers reaction to Nash's mental illness. One interesting part for me was the fact that it was difficult to tell Nash was ill in comparison with the odd behaviour of other mathemitical academics.

The book does a little too much hero worship with Einstien and others mentioned in respected tones. The insights into how the Nobel prize is selected and the controvesy over Nash's selection is of interest.

The book ended cusriously with the auctions for wireless spectruim in the USA in the 1990s. The claim is made that Nash's games theory guided the design of these auctions, resulting in them being succesful, both from the point of view of optimal allocation of resources for the public good and by raising billions of dollars for the US Government. The claim is also made that the previous spectrium auctions in Australian and New Zeland were failures because they were not informed by the theory.

1. on Page 375:
"... The most dramatic use of game theory is by governments from Australia to Mexico to sell scarce public resources to buyers best able to develop them. The radio spectrum, T-bills, oil leases, ..."
2. on Page 377:
"... design can minimize that problem. As Congress and the FCC inched closer to the notion of auctioning off spectrum rights, Australia and New Zealand both conducted spectrum auctions. ..."

Another useful point made is that a Nobel prize winning discovery can, at the time of discovery not look significant, even to those discovering it. With hindsight it may look obvious. Nash's game theory addressed the problem with classical economics, which assumed that there were so many players in a market that the actions of any one did not have a significant effect. In the case of the wireless spectrum auctions, there were only a few companies with the billions of dollars needed to make a bid or use the spectrum. The problem then was that each bidder needed to take into account the actions of the other bidders, who in turn would take into account the likely actions of their rivals. The Australia and NZ approach was to have a simple auction which failed to take this into account. The US approach has several rounds of auctions, allowing the bidders to assess their rivals positions. This reflected early experiments in games theory.