I'm a geek.  Professionally.  I went to geek school, majored in geek, and now am employed full time as a geek.  Oh, and I watch the show Numb3rs, which is on Friday nights at 10pm.  Clearly the producers of that show know who their target audience is. 

I noticed two pretty major errors in last week's episode.  One was Charlie Eppes saying something about physical forces, one of which he said was mass.  Mass is not a force.  It's a quantity.  Weight is a force.  The two words and ideas are similar in meaning and are often used interchangeably (usually by non-geeks).  But this was famed mathematician Charlie Eppes, child prodigy and current FBI consultant.  Surely he must know the difference between mass and weight! 

The other error was when they tried to calculate the size of the murderer based on how much water was displaced in the bathtub.  The theory is correct:  You can calculate the volume of a solid object by submersing it in a liquid and measuring the change in volume.  From that volume, you can calculate the mass of the object if you know its density.  Submersing a human in water and measuring his/her displaced volume will allow you to calculate his/her approximate mass based on an approximate density.  The problem with the method on the show was that they assumed the murderer was fully submersed in the bathtub.  This is a bit of a stretch since the murderer would've likely drowned if he/she was in the bathtub with the victim.  The volume of displaced water they were measuring was likely due to a combination of the murderer's feet, legs, hands, and forearms.  If they calculated a mass of anything more than say 50 lbs, I'd be a little surprised. 

C'mon, Numb3rs.  You're clearly targeting a specific audience.  Now, measure up! #entertainment