Pi Trivias

One of Sol's pet fish is named for the famed mathematician, Archimedes. The other is named Icarus - the character from Greek mythology who flew too close to the sun - a fact which is in line with Max's disability, as well as with Sol's name, which refers to the sun (sol being the root of words such as solar). Furthermore, Max's own aspirations have been considered analogous to Icarus' foolhardy attempt to achieve the impossible.

Max's mysterious headaches are explained pseudo-religiously towards the end of the film, but could also be explained in more medical terms as an extreme case of Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgias. Cluster headache, a form of Trigeminal Autonomic Cephalgias, is often considered the worst pain known to medical science today, the severity of the pain cited by patients to be worse than childbirth. Cluster headache is notoriously difficult to treat.

The Richard Ashcroft song "God in the Numbers" was inspired by the film.

The value of Pi displayed in the opening sequence of the film is incorrect beyond the first 8 decimal places: 3.14159265263124...

The number displayed on Max's computer:

94143243631512659321056872390486828512913474876027

67195923460238582958304725016523252592969257276553

64363462727184012012643147546328450127847264841075

62234789626728592858295347502772262646456217613984

829519475412398501

In different takes the "Wall-Street" numbers on the display panel are the same, the numbers never really change and it is more or less always the same stocks, no matter what time it is.The long string of digits representing pi in the opening of the movie is incorrect starting in the ninth decimal place.

The logic followed by the Kabbalists with respect to Hebrew numerology is flawed. First, there are no zeroes in the Hebrew numerological system. Second, in Hebrew numerology, the different letters have values that vary in the number of digits (the values range from 1 to 400, with only the first 9 letters having single-digit values.) Therefore, it is impossible to create a specific 216-letter-word in Hebrew given a 216-digit-number with zeroes in it. It has been argued that the Kabbalists do not use Hebrew numbers to decipher the code, rather, they use the modern western number system to correlate the 216 character name to each Hebrew letter. Nevertheless, the premise seems to be muddled, at best, if not completely flawed.

When Max is in the coffee shop, the cream container he opens has a McDonald's logo. It's a cheesy enough place that they were probably ripped off.When Robeson is discussing Archimedes' Principle with Max, he states the definition of density as weight per volume. Density actually refers to mass per volume. Any scientist or mathematician would not mistakenly say weight, as weight is an unpopular measurement among them.

The note suddenly appears on the Go board between shots when Max enters Sal's living room.Max mentions that the Golden Mean is represented by the Greek letter theta. In fact, it is phi or tau.

Max writes the golden ratio as (a/b) = (a/a+b). It should be a/b = (a+b)/a, if, by definition, a>b.When Lenny demonstrates basic examples of Hebrew numeric coincidences, he gets the numbers right but mistranslates some of the Hebrew. "Kedem" does not mean "Garden of Eden" but is a biblical word means "East" (as in "East of Eden"). Also, "Etz Hakhaim" is not the tree of knowledge but rather the other tree in the garden, the tree of life.

Max' ticker displays some stock prices in thirds, but real stock prices only used halves, quarters, eights, sixteenths, and so on.Shadow of camera operator visible looming over Max as he thrashes on the floor of his bathroom.

When Max is examining the sticky ant remains with his fingers, the substance switches from being on his middle finger to being on his index finger in the close-up.The number on the screen just before Max faints and is revived by his neighbours shows 218 digits, not 216.

Max suggests that the Kabbalists have already tried all possible 216-digit numbers. That is 10 to the power of 216 - if they had been doing a quadrillion a day since the destruction of the Temple, they would barely have begun.Max shaves his head and draws a square around the bulge on the side of his head. Later on, when Max is chasing a photographer from the subway, there is no square on his head. This could be due to time shifts in the story, and hallucinations had by Max. Making the actual linear time of events impossible to tell for sure.

Max indicates that he medicates himself with "Promazine 'HCI'." The proper name of the drug is "Promazine HCl," where the HCl stands for hydrogen chloride. The error likely occurred when either Max or a filmmaker mistook a lowercase "L" for a capital "I" on a bottle or prescription.When Max sees ABR stock price in the newspaper in the subway, it is 6 1/2 but net change from previous day is +2, a large increase, as opposed to a big drop. It was predicted by Euclides that ABR will fall to 6 1/2 after trading above 40 for years, so net change should have been -35 or something.

Pi cost only $60,000 to make, most of which was raised in the form of individual $100 contributions from the director's friends and family. When it was later bought by Artisan Entertainment, each contributor got back a $150 return on their investment.Bought by Artisan for $1,000,000.The director's mother catered for the film.