MATHEMATICAL FICTION:

a list compiled by Alex Kasman (College of Charleston)

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Good Will Hunting (1997)
Gus Van Sant (director) / Matt Damon (Screenplay)
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A young janitor at MIT solves a (supposedly) difficult problem left on a black board by a Fields medalist. This successful film did make many more people aware of the existence of the Fields medal. However, it has very little mathematical content, promotes the idea that you need to be some sort of mental superhero to be a mathematician, and the moral is: if you try to be a successful mathematician you'll end up going to a psychologist and missing out on all of the important things in life.

The script was written by Matt Damon when he was a student at Harvard (although in the original script, the janitor became a physicist not a mathematician) and was adapted for the big screen with the help of his friend Ben Affleck.

Personally, I liked the parody of this movie on Disney's Recess better!

More information about this work can be found at us.imdb.com.
(Note: This is just one work of mathematical fiction from the list. To see the entire list or to see more works of mathematical fiction, return to the Homepage.)

Works Similar to Good Will Hunting
According to my `secret formula', the following works of mathematical fiction are similar to this one:
  1. Gifted by Marc Webb (director) / Tom Flynn (writer)
  2. Regarding Roderer by Guillermo Martinez
  3. Le Théorème de Marguerite [Marguerite's Theorem] by Anna Novion (Writer and Director)
  4. Recess (Episode: A Genius Among Us) by Brian Hamill
  5. The Wizard by C.S. Godshalk
  6. Against the Odds by Martin Gardner
  7. Hajime's Algorithm by Mihara Kazuto
  8. Sophie's Diary by Dora Musielak
  9. The Zero Theorem by Pat Rushin (screenplay) / Terry Gilliam (director)
  10. Pi by Darren Aronofsky (director)
Ratings for Good Will Hunting:
RatingsHave you seen/read this work of mathematical fiction? Then click here to enter your own votes on its mathematical content and literary quality or send me comments to post on this Webpage.
Mathematical Content:
2.6/5 (15 votes)
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Literary Quality:
3.38/5 (16 votes)
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Categories:
Genre
MotifGenius, Prodigies, Academia, Math as Cold/Dry/Useless, Romance,
Topic
MediumFilms,

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Exciting News: The 1,600th entry was recently added to this database of mathematical fiction! Also, for those of you interested in non-fictional math books let me (shamelessly) plug the recent release of the second edition of my soliton theory textbook.

(Maintained by Alex Kasman, College of Charleston)