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The Math Problems from Good Will Hunting, w/ solutions
The purpose of this article is to narrate you through solutions to the two math problems solved by the fictional character Will in the 1997 Academy Award-winning movie Good Will Hunting. The narration is based largely on the excellent paper Mathematics in Good Will Hunting II: Problems from the Students Perspective by Horváth, Korándi and Szabó (2010).
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Plot
Quickly summarized Good Will Hunting tells the story of the imaginary character Will Hunting, who despite his exceptional intelligence works as a janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. There, he one day spots a problem on blackboard in a hallway posed by a Fields Medal award-winning professor named Gerald Lambeau. Gifted with an eidetic memory, Will memorizes the problem and solves it on the mirror in his bathroom at home in South Boston. Back at MIT the next day, he can’t help himself but provide his solution anonymously on the blackboard.
When the next day none of Lambeau’s students claim credit, the professor poses another, more difficult problem. Will again solves it but gets caught in the act of writing out his solution by the professor, who is shocked to realize that the most brilliant young mathematician at MIT is an uneducated janitor.
