Todays NUMB3RS didnt add up

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So the big clue is...that the computer scientist had a hobby different from his job? SO I guess noone is allowed to do anything outside the scope of their work on their own time. ALso a haobby that could lead to providing limbs to people considered a waste of time? Numb3rs you have failed.

If I'm not mistaken, you're referring to the episode where D.A.R.P.A. was trying to develop an A.I. The clue isn't so much that he had a hobby different from his job. If he was making beautiful furniture, nobody would have questioned it.

The questions were about the similarities, and why he would let something so similar detract his attention from potentially millions in DARPA funding. Also at stake was the question of his wife: If she could help him build cybernetic equipment, why couldn't she at least attempt to get security clearance for the DARPA project?

They could have explained it better, but that was essentially the point they tried to make. With that much DARPA funding on the line, and the potential to have his wife given security clearance, it didn't fit that he would build cybernetics on his own time.

Also, the point wasn't so much that the development of more advanced cybernetics would be "a waste of time"... but given the expected impact that the development of truly self-sufficient artificial intelligence would have on so many other aspects on our society (as well as the funding he was receiving), why would a programmer on the verge of such a massive discovery decide to divert his energies into a totally different field of programming? The programmer who could finally realize the goal of AI would have enormous opportunities for a very lucrative career path ahead of him, and would quite likely be on the fast track to lifelong financial security-- why detract from that by multitasking and splitting his focus between two different projects, when he could be pouring himself completely into creating AI? At the very least, it merited a closer examination of the DARPA project-- and upon examination, Charlie and Amita realized the real reason he had been devoting so much of his energies to cybernetics was because he knew the DARPA project to be a huge fraud. The cybernetics weren't a hobby-- they were his real career plans; six months down the road, to conceal the fraud, they were planning to crash the AI on purpose, and deliberately lose the whole thing.

or maybe they just stare at goats...