6 Movies Every Math-Lover Needs to See

Sure, it's basic premise is that of a romcom, but with a female lead who is an absent-minded mathematics doctoral candidate at Princeton with Albert Einstein as an uncle, we can't help but love it, cheese and all.

Russell Crowe stars as John Nash, an economics prodigy who achieves great statistical and mathematical breakthroughs while also struggling with paranoid schizophrenia. Though some critics said it wasn't an accurate portrayal of the Nobel Prize winner's life, the film did receive the best picture Academy Award in 2002.

The film that propelled Matt Damon and Ben Affleck to fame and landed them Academy Awards for best original screenplay, Good Will Hunting is the story of a troubled genius living far below his intellect. Surrounded by mathematics as a janitor at MIT, Will's talent is discovered by a professor, but his emotional problems threaten to keep him from a new life.

As a director now known for his psychological thrillers, Darren Aronofsky's debut movie, Pi, exemplifies his tense portrayal of characters spiraling through obsession. The mathematical patterns in nature and the main character's life take on his paranoid mind with the aid of film's choppy black-and-white scenes.

Without Doc's mathematical prowess and knowledge that 1.21 jiggawatts of power are needed to run the DeLorean, would Marty McFly have ever time-traveled the universe? We think not. Thanks, math!

Following the true story of Jaime Escalante, a high school math teacher in East Los Angeles determined to challenge his students to understand higher division math, Stand and Deliver was recently listed by the Library of Congress as a film of cultural significance in the National Film Registry. The inspiring tale shows disadvantaged teens succeeding at AP Calculus and making it through the grueling College Board exam.