Pilot (Numbers)

"Pilot" is the first episode of the American television show Numbers. Based on a real-life serial rape case, "Pilot" features two brothers, an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and a mathematics professor at a Southern California university, using their individual skills to capture a serial rapist who has begun to kill his victims. "Pilot" also introduces the theme of mathematics being used to solve crimes.

Written by series creators Cheryl Heuton and Nicolas Falacci, the episode was filmed twice, once in Boston, Massachusetts and once in Los Angeles, California, with two different casts using two somewhat different scripts. The test audience could not believe that the three men who portrayed the family could be related to each other, so the producers made cast changes to the family. They also made several changes to the rest of the cast to accommodate the changes in the script. Heuton and Falacci changed the script to focus on the brothers' relationship with each other. When filming finished, CBS picked up the episode and the series three weeks later.

"Pilot" first aired in the United States on January 23, 2005. The episode received mixed reviews. Mathematicians and students at California Institute of Technology enjoyed the episode and were impressed with the mathematics in it. In contrast, television critics felt as though the episode's plot about a serial rapist was unoriginal, although one critic called the math boring.