THE MATH behind NUMB3RS
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Season 2: Episode Index
Episode 201:
Judgment Call
Don and Charlie investigate the murder of a judge's wife who was gunned down in her garage. Since she was driving her husband's car, it's unclear whether she was the intended target or her husband, who is currently hearing a death-penalty case involving a local gang leader. As the probe intensifies, Don reconnects with an attractive prosecutor whose life may also be in danger.
Math used:
scatter plot, Bayesian spam filtering, conditional probability, dark matter, decision theory, pi, quantum entanglement, origami
Episode 202:
Bettor or Worse
A woman gives a Beverly Hills jewelry-store owner a note informing him that his wife and daughter have been kidnapped and will die unless he hands over diamonds worth thousands of dollars. He gives them to her, but then she is gunned down by a security guard. The shooting gets Don involved in the case and he enlists Charlie's help in identifying the dead woman through her car's keyless remote.
Episode 203:
Obsession
A stalker frightens a popular singer in her Hollywood Hills house, but doesn't harm her. The FBI becomes involved when she reveals a series of threatening letters she's received through the mail. Meanwhile, Charlie analyzes the handwriting from the letters and learns that they are from two different people. Later, a photographer is found dead near the singer's house, and Don believes the man was murdered and that his death is connected to the stalking case.
Math used:
trigonometry, curvelet analysis, forensic information system for handwriting (FISH), spherical trigonometry, art gallery problem
Episode 204:
Calculated Risk
The star witness in a federal stock-fraud case against the CEO of a now bankrupt major corporation is gunned down in her house before she can testify. The victim was the company's chief financial officer and her testimony was likely to bring down the CEO and other corporate executives. The only witness to the murder is the woman's 11-year-old son, who is in shock and is reluctant to talk.
Math used:
conditional probability, decision tree, compound interest
Episode 205:
Assassin
Don and Charlie try to unravel an assassination plot to be carried out on U.S. soil. They get wind of the plan after a forger is arrested and Charlie decodes a notebook found in the forger's apartment. The investigation leads to the son of a slain Colombian leader.
Math used:
transposition cipher, game theory, paper plane
Episode 206:
Soft Target
A toxic gas is released on a Los Angeles subway during an antiterrorism drill run by the Department of Homeland Security. Don must determine whether it was an accident or a legitimate attack before more drills are carried out over the next few days in various locations across the U.S. Back at home, old wounds are reopened between Don and Charlie when they learn that a girl they fought over in high school is going to use their dad's house for her wedding.
Math used:
percolation theory, diffusion, linear discriminant analysis, lattice points, Gaussian dispersion model, Faraday's law of induction
Episode 207:
Convergence
Don investigates a series of home invasions in which the thieves steal only high-end items from wealthy individuals. In the latest robbery, a father is killed trying to protect his family. Meanwhile, Charlie becomes upset when a rival theoretician challenges his most famous work and states that it is flawed. Back at home, Alan prepares to open his own consulting business.
Math used:
group theory, data mining, Fourier analysis, calendars, three-dimensional trilateration, set theory, projectile motion
Episode 208:
In Plain Sight
Megan feels responsible for an agent's death following an explosion at a house where methamphetamine is being illegally produced that the FBI targeted for a bust. While several men are arrested in the raid, the kingpin gets away and it's discovered that he may also be involved in child pornography. When Charlie learns this and sees a disturbing picture of a young girl at the raid site, he becomes obsessed with finding her.
Math used:
flock behavior, steganography, matrices, error-correcting codes, self-organizing systems
Episode 209:
Toxin
Don learns that someone is poisoning non-prescription drugs made by a leading pharmaceutical company after four people nearly die from the tampering. The perpetrator then publishes a manifesto in a local paper that leads Don to believe that the person may be a former employee of the drug company. Later, Larry shares his theory of the case with Megan and he discovers that he's attracted to her.
Episode 210:
Bones of Contention
A woman researcher who specializes in Native American antiquities is attacked and killed at the museum where she works. The museum is located on federal land, so the FBI is called in. Don's investigation reveals that the woman was working late at night on a secret project that involved the carbon dating of an object. Back at home, Don and Charlie become worried about their dad after they learn that he is still holding on to his late wife's clothes, which he supposedly gave away months ago.
Math used:
exponential decay, Voronoi diagram, radiocarbon dating, liquid nitrogen ice cream
Episode 211:
Scorched
An arsonist believed to be part of an extremist environmental group sets a fire at a car dealership that kills a salesman. The group's name is spray painted at the scene. It's the fourth such fire, but the first to claim a life. The activist group denies setting the blazes, which leaves Don with the task of determining whether it or someone else is responsible. Charlie tries to figure out if there is a pattern to the fires that would help provide a profile of the arsonist.
Math used:
combustion, Diffie-Hellman encryption, Pascal's principle, principal components analysis
Episode 212:
The O.G.
An FBI agent working undercover as a gang member is gunned down in a parking lot by a drive-by shooter. Don and Charlie try to determine whether the agent's cover was blown or if he was killed for another reason. Their investigation reveals that the shooting may be linked to other murders in the area. Back at home, Alan prepares to go out on a date and he asks his sons for advice.
Math used:
Poisson distribution, courtship modeling, Poisson clumping heuristic, social network analysis
Episode 213:
Double Down
A Russian student at a local college is robbed and shot to death in the parking garage of a gambling club after winning big at blackjack. In the victim's car, Don discovers a notebook containing card-counting calculations. The investigation reveals that the dead man was part of a team that cheated at cards and that his teammates may be in danger. Later, Larry admits that he was once addicted to gambling.
Math used:
sampling without replacement, time series analysis, randomization, fluid dynamics, card counting, shuffle tracking, constrained system dynamics, exploding soda bottle experiment
Episode 214:
Harvest
A southeast Asian teen is found in the blood-spattered basement of an old downtown hotel, where she was apparently being tortured. But the investigation soon reveals that the girl, along with three other missing women, are victims of a black-market organ-harvesting scheme. Don and Charlie try to find the remaining women before their organs are taken. Amita also helps out by communicating with the teen, who is from the same area of India where Amita's family once lived.
Math used:
Markov chain, ellipses, surface tension, genetic variation
Episode 215:
The Running Man
A DNA synthesizer that has the capability of customizing diseases is stolen from the campus where Charlie teaches. Don fears the thieves may be terrorists out to start or advance a bio-warfare program. He also believes the theft was an inside job and the chief suspect is one of Larry's top students. Back at home, Charlie discovers that his late mother was once a gifted musician.
Math used:
Benford's law, continued fractions, astronomy, phases of matter, LIGO, probability
Episode 216:
Protest
A pedestrian is killed when a homemade bomb explodes under a car outside of a downtown Army recruiting center. The investigation reveals that a similar bombing occurred exactly 35 years ago at an ROTC office that killed two people. The bomber was identified but never captured. A retired agent who worked the first crime is brought in to help with the new case, and Don must determine whether the original bomber has resurfaced or if a copycat is responsible.
Episode 217:
Mind Games
The bodies of three illegal-immigrant women are found on government-owned land in a wilderness area. Don investigates and learns that a psychic led the police to the crime scene after allegedly seeing visions of the bodies. The probe also reveals that the women were cut open and that religious artifacts were spread around their remains. When Charlie learns that a psychic is helping with the case, he is outraged and sets out to prove the man is a fraud.
Math used:
Fokker-Planck equation, binomial theorem
Episode 218:
All's Fair
An Iraqi woman visiting the U.S. to participate in a documentary about women's rights in Muslim countries is murdered outside of her cousin's apartment building. The investigation reveals that the killer wore U.S. Army boots and committed the crime with an Army knife. Also, Charlie's former girlfriend arrives from London on a book tour, and their relationship heats up faster than either one of them anticipated.
Math used:
density, sudoku, logistic regression, game theory
Episode 219:
Dark Matter
Two gunmen kill 7 students and a teacher, and wound 12 other people during a shooting spree at a high school. One of the gunmen is a fellow student who is gunned down during the attack. During the investigation, Charlie uses a tracking system to pinpoint the shooters' movements and concludes that a third shooter may have been involved. Also, Larry asks Megan out to dinner, but their time is spent mostly talking about the shootings.
Math used:
RFID, optimization theory
Episode 220:
Guns and Roses
A female federal agent who was once romantically involved with Don apparently commits suicide, but Don suspects she may have been murdered. Charlie joins the case and tries to determine the likelihood of the woman killing herself. The probe reveals that the victim was suffering from depression and that her marriage was in trouble. She had also been investigating a series of armed robberies that could possibly be linked to her death.
Math used:
echolocation, Holmes-Rahe scale, Doppler effect, biomathematics
Episode 221:
Rampage
A real-estate broker disarms an agent and goes on a shooting spree through FBI headquarters. During the rampage, two agents are wounded and a convicted sex offender, who was being questioned in the beating of a teenage girl, is killed. Also, Charlie is nearly hit with a bullet and later has difficulty shaking the experience. The investigation reveals that more than one person may be involved and that another shooting may be planned.
Math used:
chaos theory, Brownian motion, self-organized criticality, Venn diagrams, tesseract, hypercube
Episode 222:
Backscatter
Don's checking and savings accounts are wiped out by computer hackers after he nabs part of a team involved in credit-card scams. The two arrested men claim they were forced to work for some Russian men who may be connected to the mob. It quickly becomes clear that the mobsters are after Don, which makes him fearful that Charlie and his dad may also become targets.
Episode 223:
Undercurrents
The bodies of four Asian women wash up on shore following a storm, and a fifth woman is found alive floating in the water. An autopsy reveals that one of the victims has the bird-flu strain in her body, and Don worries there could be a pandemic if she came in contact with anyone else. Meanwhile, Charlie studies ocean currents in an attempt to determine where the girls may have fallen into the water, while Amita gives Charlie some surprising news.
Episode 224:
Hot Shot
Don investigates the murders of two young women found slumped over in their cars outside of their respective homes. The deaths were made to look like drug overdoses, but Don realizes that a serial killer is at work. Meanwhile, Charlie has bizarre dreams about his parents. In one of them, Charlie's deceased mother appears and tells him that he has a question to ask her, but he can't think what it could possibly be.
Math used:
directed graph, network flow, parabolic equations, probability, kernel density estimation, trajectory
 
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