Talk:Proof (2005 film)

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[edit] Mentioned Sophie Germain prime

The movie mentions the Sophie Germain prime 92305 × 2¹⁶⁹⁹⁸ - 1 which Catherine says is the largest known. Unwittingly, this dates the movie a lot more than the technologies shown. In the age of cell phones (which Catherine and her sister are shown using) much larger Sophie Germain primes are known, like 1415551851 × 2⁴¹²⁸² - 1, which has over ten thousand base 10 digits. In some ways, though, the 92305 is still impressive. Approximately 7.466060811972647 × 10⁵¹²¹, it takes Mathematica a while to confirm whether it's prime or not. PrimeFan 20:30, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

They had William Timothy Gowers, Fields medalist and author of Mathematics: A Very Short Introduction, as a consultant, so perhaps he didn't think it an important enough point to suggest changing the script. Or maybe he did suggest the change but the writer either argued that the 92305 was the number given in the original play or that the largest known at the time would take up too much screen time to say.

Gowers's book mentions some of the topics dealt with in the movie (chapter 8, questions 1 and 2). Robert Happelberg 23:02, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone know when (or if) the 92305 was the largest known Sophie Germain prime? I.e., how does it date the play? dbenbenn | talk 03:44, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

1995 see http://perso.wanadoo.fr/yves.gallot/primes/chrrcds.html#Sophie --Salix alba (talk) 07:51, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually its not listed, so may not be a SG prime, I presume its p=92305 × 2¹⁶⁹⁹⁸-1, could anyone check if 2p-1 is also prime. --Salix alba (talk) 08:01, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I wrote the number down wrong. Mathematica takes less than a second to tell me it's not prime. It's trying to factor it for me as we speak, but I don't know how long that will take. But I don't feel like renting that movie again just to listen for one number. PrimeFan 21:59, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other theories?

Several mathematical theories are mentioned throughout the movie, perhaps a list of them (linking to their places on Wikipedia) could be included in this article. - Kevingarcia 04:19, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Those theories are not all that relevant to the plot of the movie, and by extension I don't think they're important to this article either. For example, in one scene the young man lists a few of the theories involved in Catherine's proof and says that it proves that she wrote the proof because those theories are "hip," they were developed in the 1980s, 1990s. We are never told exactly what the proof is supposed to prove (there's a vague hint that it involves an ancient unsolved problem about prime numbers) so it's difficult to say whether those "hip" theories are relevant to the issue tackled by the proof. PrimeFan 23:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Coldplay

Trivia: Although it's only a coincidence, "Proof" is also the name of a song (a b-side from Speed of sound) by Coldplay. Paltrow is married to Coldplay's lead singer Chris Martin. --Coldplayer 22:46, 11 June 2006 (UTC)