How real is this show.

While some episodes have significant influence of maths, quite often they cannot solve. Mainly because of 2 reasons.

1) Charlie cannot possibly have ALL the facts he needs to come up with an algorithm.

Take the pilot episode for example. Charlie says that he can predict the rapist's location. He uses the sprinkler as an example. But then he found that his algorithm was wrong because the locations chosen can be from multiple points (two sprinkler example). However, even that can be wrong because unless the killer spread his targets in circular pattern from both locations, Charlie cannot know that it's only from 2 locations. If the killer had more than 2 comfort zones, the spread will be different too (say his current living place, his work place and his parents' place). Without having the facts, he cannot come up with an algorithm.

Similarly in Dirty Bomb episode from Season 1, the guys did not intend to use the dirty bomb. Only threatened it. And Charlie predicted 2 locations and they blew up a normal bomb as a distraction. How would they know the cops would come to that exact place and evacuate it? They never specified a location and the target could have been anywhere. The math had nothing to do with the location they selected to burglarise. It was a lucky shot.

2) Human behavior is not predictable. A person's decision to do or not do something gets influenced by too many factors.

Charlie cannot predict a human's behavior. He can do a probability calculation but the probability won't take into fact about the suspect's experience/feelings etc. For example, if a suspect never took any risk in his life, then the probability will indicate he will not take any risk in the situation too. But what if the adrenaline pumped suspect decides to risk it? Charlie's equation cannot predict that.

Honestly, Megan's profiling (in Season 2 onwards) would help better than Charlie's probability when predicting what a suspect would do in a situation (which is why I think Criminal Minds series is more accurate than this). However, if he is handling cases involving numbers, then the math will be very useful. Because that is based on facts that cannot change. Not predicting something that is fluid and can change.

In some situations, it is ridiculous how they say math helped them. In one of the episodes (can't remember the name), they try to find a bullet the suspects shot in the air. They don't know the type of gun or the angle he shot. Yet they somehow got an algorithm and found the bullet. Seriously? The number of unknown variables (wind velocity etc.) are too many to even come up with radius to search for the bullet.

One thing Charlie said in Season 2 beginning was that the Math algorithm he creates is just a tool to help them. But later on, that became their primary source and not a tool. They should have combined the math with detective work in a better way than they did with some episodes.

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