MATHEMATICIAN AT THE MOVIES

Could Ferris Bueller’s day off have really happened? SIMON PAMPENA crunches the numbers.

Ferris Bueller packed a lot into one day off. SIMON PAMPENA calculates whether the plot adds up.

As a kid I loved Ferris Bueller. As an adult I think he has all the makings of a sociopath. But back then I didn’t see such flaws. Instead I saw him as a teenage Robin Hood – taking from the old to give to the young, namely himself. But as much as I wanted to believe that a high school student could pack that much fun into just one day, the story needed to add up, numerically speaking.

Yes, I am well aware this classic teen movie is a work of fiction. But I was interested in knowing if Ferris and company could actually have crammed in as much as they did during the time that they had. That’s all. And yes, this is my idea of a good time.

The deadline we have is Ferris’ parents returning home at 6pm. So let’s get started. Morning Bueller residence

John Hughes wrote the script for Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in just one week. It helped that Hughes was a Chicago native and had an intimate knowledge of the city. The school Ferris attended – Shermer High – and the house of his best friend Cameron were both real locations in Hughes’ childhood suburb. Very handy. Ferris’ house was also a real location, but a bit farther out – 3,280 km to be precise, in Long Beach, Los Angeles. Oh dear. Falling over at the starting line! But not to worry – Cameron’s house happens to be a perfect place to start our timeline. We just need to work out what time that was.

By the middle of second period of the school day, Ferris had just stepped into the driver’s seat of a rare 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spider. According to the Chicago public school timetable this puts us at 9:30am. “Che bella.” Time to swing by the school and pick up Ferris’ girlfriend, Sloane.

9:45am Shermer High School

The shortest route from Cameron’s house to their high school is 12 km. Given that the journey was in a 30 mi/h (48 km/h) speed zone and their car could accelerate from 0 to 100 in 6.3 secs, I estimate that they got there in 15 minutes. They spent 2 minutes at the school and then they were off to the big city. This mid-morning transit takes approximately 45 minutes, so let’s put them in downtown Chicago by 10:30am. 10:30am Downtown parking garage

Here’s another real-world film location. The carpark used in the film was only 580 m away from their first port of call. So far, so good. After handing over their US$110,000 car to dubious parking attendants, it’s exactly a 5-minute walk to Chicago’s tallest skyscraper, Willis Tower, as long as they averaged a brisk 6.96 km/h. Let’s say they spent 20 minutes here before power-walking another 5 minutes (or 748 steps) to their next stop, the Chicago Board of Trade. Here they watched some 1100 pit traders making deals via a trading sign language combining