THE MATH behind NUMB3RS
Original Math Notes
All Seasons
Season 1 Season 2 Season 3 Season 4 Season 6
Season 5: Episode Index
Episode 501 Episode 501:
High Exposure »
The fifth season begins with the murders of two rock climbers who possess a valuable stolen diamond. Don is assisted in the investigation by Agent Edgerton. Meanwhile, Charlie considers whether he wants to get his FBI clearance back, and a new agent (and former LAPD officer) joins the team. More »
Math used:
crystallography, polarized light, squish-squash, satellite orbits, energy fields
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Bathtub and Billards »
Episode 501 Episode 502:
The Decoy Effect »
Don investigates a series of kidnappings occurring at ATMs after one kidnapping victim is murdered. Charlie meets with an FBI investigator who has the power to grant or deny him a security clearance with the Bureau. More »
Math used:
ternary computing, triangles, combinatorics, distributed neural networks, Smith rule, beam search, scheduling algorithms
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Ternary Twist »
Episode 503 Episode 503:
Blowback »
When eight people, including two police officers, are executed in a coffee shop, an LAPD detective gets the team on the case, and they uncover a trail of blackmail, romance, and corruption. Also, McGowan's investigation of Charlie and Don deepens. More »
Math used:
aggregation models, graphene, hidden Markov models, stereograms
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Stereogram »
Episode 504 Episode 504:
Thirty-Six Hours »
When a train carrying passengers collides with one carrying chemicals, Amita and Larry must work against the clock to help Don's team find survivors. More »
Math used:
swarm computing, ant algorithms, boid model, Mathematica, Gantt charts, metric system
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Two Trains »
Episode 505 Episode 505:
Jack of All Trades »
Don and his team are called in to help a veteran FBI agent track down a con artist who has eluded authorities for years. Also, Agent McGowan hands down his decision on Charlie's security clearance and Don's future with the FBI. More »
Math used:
Chaitin's constant, image warping, splines, belief propagation, social security numbers
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Warped »
Episode 506 Episode 506:
Scan Man »
A mathematical savant has sent numerous shipping boxes in perpetual travel around the country. Now, a dangerous team of criminals is trying to exploit this scheme. More »
Math used:
error-correcting codes, compound interest, fractal curves, mathematical savants
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Errors »
Episode 507 Episode 507:
Magic Show »
As agent David Sinclair watches a magic trick, a lady vanishes, but blood is the only thing that reappears. The FBI investigates. More »
Math used:
blood spatter trigonometry, volume calculations, stage magic, hydraulic press
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Card Trick »
Episode 508 Episode 508:
Charlie Don't Surf »
When a professional surfer and childhood friend of Don is killed in a supposed surfing accident, the surfer's father asks Alan and the NUMB3RS team to launch an investigation. More »
Math used:
lensmaker's equation, optics, NOAA, vector fields, speed of light and sound, deconvolution algorithms, roshambo, focal points, wave physics, magnifying glass, oceanography, rock-paper-scissors game, spectral density functions, Fourier transforms, neural networks
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Lightwave »
Episode 509 Episode 509:
Conspiracy Theory »
Many radical groups suspect the Global Enhancement Organization as being behind several conspiracies. When the offices of the GEO explode, the FBI must sift through possibly untrustable data. More »
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Nonrandom Matrix »
Episode 510 Episode 510:
Frienemies »
An illegal vigilante group has initial success fighting crime, until they attack the wrong gang. Charlie must ask his longtime rival, Dr. Marshall Penfield, for help in pre-identifying the location of the next conflict. Colin Hanks guest stars. More »
Math used:
Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, Vigenère ciphers, three-person duals
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Last Person Standing »
Episode 511 Episode 511:
Arrow of Time »
In the season 3 opener, Don put away mass murderer Buck Winters. Now, Buck has escaped prison, putting the team into a possibly irreversible situation. More »
Math used:
entropy, simplex method, Taylor expansions, Shannon's source coding theorem, decitexes, arrow of time, Viterbi algorithm, Maxwell's Demon
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Arrow of King »
Episode 512 Episode 512:
Jacked »
A tour bus with 18 passengers is hijacked by a sophisticated group demanding a million dollars per passenger. With the windows painted over and the bus in motion, the team must visualize not only the interior of the bus, but the intended endgame. More »
Math used:
128-bit encryption, elliptic curve cryptography, computer aided design, poker
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Cubic Sums »
Episode 513 Episode 513:
Trouble in Chinatown »
A gunfight in Chinatown gains the attention of the FBI, as well as attention from returning psychic Simon Kroft (John Glover). Written by Peter MacNicol. More »
Math used:
noise analysis, filters, multi-layer encryption, mahjong, Lévy flights, numerology
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Magic 8 Cube »
Episode 514 Episode 514:
Sneakerhead »
A theft at the Brazilian consulate puts the team of gumshoes into the lucrative world of collectible sneakers. Directed by Emelio Estevez. More »
Math used:
wavelet analysis, voice recognition, phonemes, hyperspectral sensors
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Phonetic Vault »
Episode 515 Episode 515:
Guilt Trip »
A jury for one of Don's cases is compromised when the Mersenne twister algorithm selecting it is hacked. More »
Math used:
hydrophilic spheres, lotteries, Mersenne twister, spatial dynamic jury model, coin flips, herding techniques
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Coin Flips »
Episode 516 Episode 516:
Cover Me »
Charlie models a plan to disrupt a new drug market, but an assisting undercover agent may be unreliable. Directed by Rob Morrow. More »
Math used:
economic modeling theory, market disruption
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Cover Me »
Episode 517 Episode 517:
First Law »
When a DARPA AI researcher dies in the computer lab, Charlie, Amita, and the FBI investigates. The new system may have passed the Turing test, but might also be a murderer. More »
Math used:
Turing test, chess, roses, DARPA's 17 challenges
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: DARPA's 23 »
Episode 518 Episode 518:
12:01 a.m. »
A mobster is about to be executed for a murder he may not have committed. Can Charlie assist with the case, and help out the Cal-Sci basketball team at the same time? More »
Math used:
rainbow, Gaussian smoothing, ragdoll physics
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Blurry Words »
Episode 519 Episode 519:
Animal Rites »
An animal rights group is implicated in the death of a researcher. A flash mob on the Cal-Sci campus complicates matters, and soon a full-scale rescue effort is necessary. More »
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Two Shuffles »
Episode 520 Episode 520:
The Fifth Man »
When Charlie moves into the Biederman office, he is inspired to work on an idea -- but neglects to study a case that Don asked for help with. More »
Math used:
uncertainty principle, payoff matrix, Voronoi tesselations, path minimization, Djikstra's algorithm
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: From A to Z »
Episode 521 Episode 521:
Disturbed »
Charlie builds a database of unsolved cases, on the hypothesis that a smart serial killer connects many of them. In this 100th episode, he winds up revisiting events from the 1st episode. More »
Math used:
SETI, signal detection, microclusters, Kim Rossmo algorithms, lunar phases
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Knots »
Episode 522 Episode 522:
Greatest Hits »
Nikki feels a sense of extreme deja vu while investigating a bank robbery. Henry Winkler reprises his role as Agent Bloom (Episode 505). More »
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Convergence »
Episode 523 Episode 523:
Angels and Devils »
In this continuation of Episode 522, Charlie and Don hunt for a kidnap victim who is the key for a bank robbery. Lou Diamond Phillips returns as Agent Edgerton. More »
Math used:
John Horton Conway, angel problem, burr puzzles, Bill Cutler, Eulerian cycles
Are you a math genius?
Puzzle: Polycubes »
 
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