1.618

The most beautiful number!

If you start with the numbers 0 and 1, and make a list in which each new number is the sum of the previous two, you get a list like this:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, ... to infinity-->

This is called a Fibonacci series.
If you then take the ratio of any two sequential numbers in this series, you'll find that it falls into an increasingly narrow range:

1/0 = Whoa! That one doesn't count.
1/1 = 1
2/1 = 2
3/2 = 1.5
5/3 = 1.6666...
8/5 = 1.6
13/8 = 1.625
21/13 = 1.61538...
34/21 = 1.61904...
and so on, with each addition coming ever closer to multiplying by some as-yet-undetermined number.

The number that this ratio is oscillating around is phi (1.6180339887499...). It's interesting to note that the ratio 21/13 differs from phi by less than .003, and 34/21 by only about .001 (less than 1/10 of one percent!), thus providing our less technically-advanced ancestors an easy way to derive phi on a large scale in the real world with a high degree of precision.

The number also appears in nature all the time!

The relationship of males and females in a honeybee colony. If you divide the number of females by males in any colony, you always get the same number. 1.618!

Sunflower seeds grow in spirals. the ratio of each rotation's diameter is... 1.618!

Next time you are in the shower, take a tape measure.

Measure the distance of the top of your head to the floor and divide the distance from your belly button to the floor.

Shoulder to you fingertips, then divide it by you elbow to your fingertips.

Hip to floor divided by knee to floor.

Finger joints.

Toes.

Spinal divisions.

EVERYTHING IS EQUAL TO PHI!!!

Truly an amazing number.

i dont think im going to waste my time measuring myself but thats a kool number.......i heard you can measure someones weight in each 1 sqaured inch of his body .....its a simple eqaution really.........but i forget.......ok someone else do it im too lazy to....besides i dont have a tape measure

MacKiller, this is interesting and it brings up a memory of something I had heard in statistics; but of course I don't remember. If you're interested, here are some other topics relating to this:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

PHI is the Hand of God, Hand of Creation. God is math

It is indeed an amazing number

phi is everywhere from planet distances (ie mercury to venus; venus to earth) are all in a ratio which is 1:1.618, the golden ratio. also the number of male bees to female bees is 1:1.618 all over the world.

this is officially my phaphorite number

Wow... that's pretty freaking awesome. Wasn't e also another number that appeared frequently in nature? It stood for 2.2283984729874329 or something like that. It's used in logirithms quite frequently.

[edit on 9-7-2004 by WaStEdDeAtH777]

I would recomend the movie PI to anyone who enjoys the fact that patterns of numbers are everywhere .

It is a very good fiction movie with many true to life numerical observations in it .
(And it has TWO !! conspiracies rolled into it !! , a must for the ATS mathematicaly inclined)

i think you are thinking of e. 2.71828182845709, or something like that. basically the slope of e^x at 0 = 1, so it shows up quite a lot. i think, man i should know this stuff cold.

pie and body parts to not mix.

I think that, although the number does occur sometimes in nature, people are overestimating its importance. Did you do the tests in your post?

I couldn't find a way to get phi with the lengths of my finger joints. The bee thing is also wrong (source):



2000/40000 does not even approach phi.

Although it is an interesting number, I think you're looking for it too much and seeing things that aren't there. More on fibonacci pseudoscience.

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MacKiller, If i could show you an Ln algorithm for determining large Fibonacci numbers would you be interested? I believe it is original. The current best algorithm is linear. N.
.

Read "The Davinci Code" by Dan Brown if this topic interests you.

Incindentaly, the thread starter lifted an entire paragraph from the book without even mentioning it.

Incindentaly, no I didn't.

I only used examples from the book, as well as others, so for there being no sources given.

The Logarithm was invented so that people could do calculations involving really large or really small numbers in the days before computers or calculators. Logarithms can have any base, but the most common base is base 10, since the number system we use is base 10.

Over centuries, however, it was discovered that nature had its own base number. Like other numbers that occur in nature (for example, pi = 3.14...), nature's base number for counting is irrational. Mathematicians call it e = 2.72... The number e occurs naturally in systems of exponential growth and decay, trigonometry, and calculus.

whats this 1.1618? I thought pi was 3.1416?

Lol. Yes indeed. Who has read The DaVinci Code? ROFL.. Cmon.. if you're going to take it out of Dan Browns Book, The DaVinci Code... Then at least mention the book.

1.618... is phi, defined as (1+sqrt(5))/2.

Grnted its been a while since I have done any math that didn't involve dollar signs and financial reports are all straight forward basic math but why am I thinking 3.1416 is such n important number?

Great! That WAS also my ATM pin. Thanks a pantload for broadcasting it!