This movie is based on a true story. An MIT math whiz joins a group of card counters and goes gambling at the blackjack tables in Los Vegas. They study during the week, and gamble during the weekends. Kevin Spacey plays the vindictive professor who organizes the team and Jim Sturgess plays the financially struggling math whiz that has been accepted to Harvard Medical School.

A Beautiful Mind

Based on a true story about John Nash, Russell Crowe plays a brilliant but asocial mathematician and his lifelong struggles with mental health. He is enrolled as a graduate student at Princeton and attempts to come up with a unique mathematical theorem. He becomes a professor at MIT where he meets and marries Alicia. He loses his grip on reality and becomes diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He withdraws from society, but he eventually makes his way back to teaching and researching, even winning a Nobel Prize.

An Invisible Sign

This movie is my favorite pick for Pi Day. Mona Gray (played by Jessica Alba) is a quirky girl who hides in a world of numbers and is offered a job as a math teacher. She has a shy romance with the science teacher. All the characters have odd little habits and many are eccentric loners. Don't try to psychoanalyze or diagnose any of them though. The editorial review on Amazon says it is "second chances, emotional equations and calculating the power of love." It is a quirky movie, not always realistic, which makes it even more perfect for Pi Day.

Good Will Hunting

Ben Afleck and Matt Damon star in this movie about a math genius who works as a janitor at MIT. He was an orphan raised by a series of abusive foster parents. He gets the help of a psychiatrist, played by Robin Williams. It is a touching, inspirational story about one man's struggle to overcome his troublesome past while reaching out to grasp life, love and happiness.  If you are not sure how well other people will take to finding out about your inner geek, then Good Will Hunting is a great movie to watch with them, as it is a very popular movie that has stood the test of time.

INTO BINGE WATCHING:

Numb3rs

Numb3ers is a television show that played on CBS for six seasons. Pick a season for a marathon of TV watching. Starring Rob Morrow and David Krumholtz, two brothers solve crimes. Don Eppes is an FBI agent who gets help from his mathematical genius brother Charlie to solve a wide range of criminal cases in Los Angeles. Through this show, we learn about the wide range of ways numbers and mathematics can be used in fields that we would not expect.