Happy Groundhog Day everyone! Brief synopsis of Groundhog Day in case you didn’t know: Bill Murray is trapped in the same, repeating day in perpetuity.
How long Murray has been trapped is a question that has plagued mankind since the early 1990’s. It’s never directly addressed in the movie, it’s just hinted that it’s a long, long time. Probably months, possibly years.
Artifact
How many days do you think it took Bill Murray to adequately retrieve and retain enough information to convince Rita that he is, in fact, a god?
Guiding Questions
- How many people did Bill Murray discuss?
- How many people are in the restaurant?
- How many times would it take to know all that stuff about them?
- How many times through would it take to get the timing on that crash of the tray dropping?
Suggested Activities
Some of these questions can be observed from the video. Some of these questions probably have to be estimated. But then, some could be investigated by your students. Think of all those “getting to know you” activities you put at the start of the year. Couldn’t we recreate something like that with this scene? Couldn’t we investigate “how many conversations does it take before you know enough details to describe the person well?”
Or couldn’t we investigate how many times before we could know exactly when an event will occur (the tray dropping)? I mean, don’t we do that in rewatching movies all the time?
emergent math 
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