CBS' Numbers

"We all use Math everyday
To predict the weather
To tell time
TO handle money
We also use Math to analyze crimes
To reveal patterns
To predict behavior
Using numbers, we can solve the biggest problems we know"
-Numb3rs OBB

After the ground-breaking CSI, CBS serves up a different kind of crime-busting show using a novel way of solving crimes. In Numb3rs (Numbers), brothers who are virtual opposites team-up to fight crime. Their main weapon is students' greatest nemesis: Mathematics.

Don Eppes (Rob Morrow) is the rugged FBI Agent who regularly call upon his Math wizard brother Charlie Eppes (David Krumholtz) to help solve crimes in the Los Angeles area.

I think the show owes it success to presenting a new approach to crime-solving. After the surprising success of CSI, a number of shows and networks tried to duplicate its success with their own forensics-based crime show. Needless to say, most of these attempts died a natural death. Numb3rs, on the other hand, gave a new spin crime-fighting.

Instead of forensics, the Eppes brothers utilize Math and its many complex formulas, theorems, postulates and whatnots to solve crimes. In the first season alone, they were able to employ Math to solve train sabotage, bank robberies, a kidnapping and a suicide attempt.

The real challenge to the show and its writers is expanding the seemingly limited applications of Math. Unlike forensics-based shows which have almost unlimited possibilities, Numb3rs is faced with the limited applications of Math. Since the shows mostly depends on the creation of formulas to predict patters and behavior, a single formula can suffice for more than one case.

Hopefully, Numb3rs will continue to expand Math's horizons in the crime-busting arena.

Numb3rs also feature Judd Hirsch as Alan Eppes, the father of the Eppes brothers; Alimi Ballard as David Sinclair and Diane Farr as Megan Reeves, Don's colleague in the FBI; Navi Rawat
as Amita Ramajuan, as Charlie's Math student and possible love interest; and Peter MacNicol as Dr. Larry Fleinhardt, Charlie's mentor.