Posted on 04/21/2017 9:41:09 PM PDT by MtnClimber
For hundreds of years until the ebb of the Italian Renaissance, one name was synonymous with arithmetic. This was Leonardo — not the polymath from Vinci, but Leonardo Pisano (ca. 1170-1250), now popularly known as Fibonacci.
Yet we know little of Fibonacci’s life beyond the nickname and his Pisan roots: most details come from a 160-word autobiographical sketch written in 1202. He is often assumed to have discovered the so-called ‘Fibonacci sequence’, which starts with zero and 1 and is thereafter the sum of the two previous numbers (so 1, 2, 3, 5 and so on). The sequence shows up with astonishing frequency in natural spiral structures such as shells and plant tendrils.
Fibonacci did not, however, discover the sequence – it was recorded in Sanskrit at least as far back as 200 BC. Nor does the sequence explain anything about artistic beauty via the so-called ‘golden section’, as Keith Devlin reminds us in his new book Finding Fibonacci. The Pisan’s greatest legacy was to help Europe dump the ancient system of Roman numerals and switch to Hindu-Arabic numbers from 1 to 9 and, perhaps most importantly, 0, which Fibonacci called zephirum after the Arabic ṣifr.........
Roman numerals made multiplication and division extremely cumbersome (try dividing MXCI by LIII); they were no match for the 10-digit positional system invented by the Hindus some time before 700 AD and common in the Arab world. And compared to using, say, an abacus, calculations in Hindu-Arabic numbers also allowed an “audit trail”, as Devlin points out: “An individual sitting in Pisa controlling a network of traders needed to be able to review the financial books on a regular basis.”
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.nature.com ...
Bkmk
Math is used to describe physics in human terms, and physics is the root of all other sciences.
If you want proof of God, you have merely to look at the physical laws that shape our entire existence. It is not in the story of Genesis, but in the absolute consistency and immutability of physical law.
When I was a kid, and had endless quantities of paper and pencils, I used to amuse myself by playing with mathematics. I'm surprised by how much I figured out, some things which I only learned formally when I finally took calculus in college.
Having decided that mathematics is too boring, and chemistry and biology are more my style, I became a biochemist, and so the most complicated math I use is logarithmic functions. In the biology world, logarithms explain almost everything. And in the few cases where the biological function is better explained by a polynomial, the log function gives an approximate answer within three or four decimal points. Which is convenient, because logs are much easier to calculate than polynomials.
If you want computational efficiency, you use binary bits to represent numerical values. Arabic numerals are just a crutch for humans. Besides, they’re Arabic.
What children know today is astonishing! Not only do they know about such things, but they can often paraphrase and apply the knowledge.
This--and other unexplained things--are the reasons why I think there must have been advanced civilizations before Egypt flowered, ca. 3000 B.C., the most obvious traces of which the earth has long since devoured.
Interesting article... now I need to see if I can get info on him at the library.
Yes, and all are God’s Natural Laws.
I feel dizzy all of a sudden. I'm going back to bed..........
A rabbi, a priest, 2 ministers and 3 pastors walk into a bar. The bartender says “is this some type of Fibonacci sequence?”
Eratosthenes.
Opposite interior angles of parallel lines (rays of the sun). The length of the legs of a triangle formed by the sun casting a shadow on a stick on the ground is similar to a triangle formed between the city you are in and one of the tropic lines, and the radii of the earth to each city.
He calculated the circumference of the earth, and the distance between cities, within a few miles.
It’s also proof positive the earth is curved, though its not what we teach kids in school. Apparently, we needed Magellan to deliver the empirical evidence.
Creation or invention? I believe creation.
Does 1+(-1) really equal 0?
God involved quantum mechanics throughout the universe too.
In a world where all outcomes are possible, yet in experiment we can only measure one, do they all actually take place in a bifurcating existence?
Long Story: Took my mother and Mother-in-law to Italy before they both died a few years ago. They were both 90 at the time. Mother-in-law was Italian and always wanted to go. Mom went along for company. Wife stayed home as she called it her vacation. I worked off past sins.
Without wife I gazed at the passing Italian girls who were very attractive and had a long striding walk style I like. Mom noticed me watching and commented on one particularly beautiful girl and remarked that she was wearing a Fibonaci plaid jacket. I asked what that was.
She scoffed at my ignorance, so when I went home I read “The Man of Numbers”. She wove a duplicate to the girls jacket. Made her own cloth according to the series which is what a Fibonaci plaid is.
I still have the jacket
...
Who’s there?
Fibonacci
++++
Cute,
Very Cute.
I wish I could dream up stuff like that.
This Fibonacci joke is as bad as the last two you heard combined.
It's fun to tell very bad Fibonacci jokes. Then observe who gets them. <^..^>
Watched a BBC produced series on Netflix called “The Story of Maths” (4 episodes) presented by Marcus du Sautoy. It was both fascinating and entertaining, and I am not even a mathematician.
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