The Math in Good Will Hunting is Easy: How Do You Like Them Apples?

Per­haps you remem­ber the scene (above) in Gus Van San­t’s 1997 film, Good Will Hunt­ing. MIT pro­fes­sor Ger­ald Lam­beau, win­ner of the cov­et­ed Fields Medal, chal­lenges his grad­u­ate stu­dents to solve a math prob­lem that he, him­self, spent two years try­ing to crack. That set the bar pret­ty high. So, imag­ine every­one’s sur­prise when Will Hunt­ing, a jan­i­tor at MIT played by Matt Damon, wres­tles the prob­lem to the ground with­out break­ing a men­tal sweat.

?t=13s

Well, not quite every­one was sur­prised, espe­cial­ly not the math­e­mati­cians behind the Num­ber­phile video series. Right above James Grime, who resides at the Depart­ment of Math­e­mat­ics and The­o­ret­i­cal Physics at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, breaks down the famous “Home­o­mor­phi­cal­ly Irre­ducible Trees of Degree Ten” prob­lem. And, it turns out, it’s a prob­lem mere mor­tals can solve fair­ly eas­i­ly at home.

Num­ber­phile also offers a quick bonus video that tries to answer anoth­er tough ques­tion: Who was the real Will Hunt­ing? Who was the char­ac­ter mod­eled after? There are a few prime can­di­dates.…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Math­e­mat­ics in Movies: Har­vard Prof Curates 150+ Scenes

Cal­cu­lus Life­saver: A Free Online Course from Prince­ton

Math: Free Cours­es