217 Comments
- possiblyneil, on 05/17/2008, -4/+137Has anyone heard the song Lateralus by Tool? All the lyrics are arranged in Fibonacci sequence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS7CZIJVxFY - monicazir, on 05/17/2008, -1/+68So, WHY does nature find it efficient and useful to grow things this way? I know why a circle is a good form for bubbles( resulting in 3.14...pi), so there has to be a purpose for this calculation inherent in a physical process... I don't think it's any more magical than is the difficulty in conceptualizing the transcendental numbers or the trig functions that ultimately have to be calculated as limits but approximated in the practical every day measurements....
- Hefelumpman, on 05/17/2008, -10/+72http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#Disputed ...
Buried for inaccuracy and pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo. - InTheBurbs, on 05/17/2008, -1/+40I dugg it 3.14159 times. Dammit, I'm doing this wrong
- julianp, on 05/17/2008, -3/+369:22, Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun, so once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood.
- tommah, on 05/17/2008, -0/+26My hypothesis: within the stock market there is a pattern as well. Right in front of me. Hiding behind the numbers.
12:50, Press return. - inactive, on 05/17/2008, -5/+29Another great example of how math can be COOL!
- parkamark, on 05/17/2008, -1/+25Or (1+sqrt(5)) / 2, for those who want an exact value.
- Terasiel, on 05/17/2008, -1/+21I call ***** on some of these. Distances on one's body can be dramatically different from person to person. For a 1.618 ratio to always exist, people with wider shoulders would always have shorter necks, people with small mouths would always have small noses, people with tall heads would always have thin faces. This is another example of scientists giving each other a pat on the back without proving themselves beyond doubt.
- dylio, on 05/17/2008, -2/+21The drum beats in Lateralus are aligned with the fibbonaci sequence as well.
- pigducksheep, on 05/17/2008, -2/+21Michael Scofield knows all about Fibonacci.
- bluelightnin90, on 05/17/2008, -1/+20Pics or it didn't happen.
Seriously, how are you going to have an article on examples of Fibonacci sequences in nature without pics. I believe the article, but it was boring without pics. - evilcaptain, on 05/17/2008, -4/+22why not?
who created him?
Isn't it better to say that we don't know yet, than to just say "god did it"
Most of the "God did it" things through history, turned out to be "God isn't anywhere" :) - greenblob, on 05/17/2008, -4/+21"There is no question that if the world had to be divided into the 'poetic dreamers' and 'rational thinkers' most people would place mathematicians in the latter category. Nevertheless, the fact is that there is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics, and allows more freedom of expression than poetry, art, or music. Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood."
-Paul Lockhart - acetv, on 05/17/2008, -0/+14The existence of transcendental numbers implies that the number system is wrong? It doesn't make phi (for example) any less of a number. I'd be more concerned if we had a number system that represented how many apples you buy as a non-terminating decimal.
- jivatmanx, on 05/17/2008, -0/+14Actually, it was known to Indian mathematicians hundreds of years before Fibonacci. Why not? It's not a particularly complex algorithm.
- inactive, on 05/17/2008, -2/+16I have some stock prediction software to sell.
- PocketWatch, on 05/17/2008, -0/+1411:15, restate my assumptions: 1. Mathematics is the language of nature. 2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. 3. If you graph these numbers, patterns emerge. Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature.
- AndrewDB, on 05/17/2008, -2/+15That's absolutely crazy.
Thank you for the wonderful link. - diggFM, on 05/18/2008, -2/+154 8 15 16 23 42
- LeeMaple, on 05/17/2008, -0/+12Agreed, spend 5 minutes with a measuring tape or micrometer and you'll not find the sequence represented once on your body..
- rguinn, on 05/17/2008, -0/+12This article should definitely come with visual examples. Buried out of principle...
- i4mt3hwin, on 05/17/2008, -3/+15I like tool as much as the next guy, but this is retarded. 90% of the tracks have silence at the end and the ones that don't, don't fit at all.
- JustinDM, on 05/17/2008, -11/+22Pretty interesting. However I was turned off after the writer said God was trying to tell us something. More like there is something efficient about 1.618.
- inactive, on 05/17/2008, -6/+16if you rearrange the songs in that album and play them in a fibonacci sequence type order they all flow into one another a lot better
- GhostWithToast, on 05/17/2008, -3/+12don't forget spiral galaxies.
- Redline500, on 05/18/2008, -0/+9No one else digg the article once it reached 1618 diggs!
- KillPenguin, on 05/18/2008, -0/+9Hey, look at that, I broke the UI. Awesome.
- Yazoo, on 05/17/2008, -1/+10http://pi.ytmnd.com/
- MeHow, on 05/17/2008, -3/+12Because if you take the limit of that sequence it equals 1.618... not pi/2
- seabass341, on 05/17/2008, -1/+10Just in case anyone wanted to know, the golden ration is the number that satisfies the equation: x^2-x=1. It presents itself often in nature because it is considered efficient and aesthetically pleasing. It is also important to realize that a lot of claimed "examples of the golden ratio" are the product of people looking for it wherever they can find it. If you look hard enough for something in nature, you'll find it.
- consoneo, on 05/17/2008, -0/+8That may be true, but it is only a measurement term... that's just like saying "Man is the creator of time." Sure we are, but the delays that we measure with our "time" is still there whether or not we are able to measure it. Just like distances are still there whether or not we are able to measure them. Though, they may be viewable in many different ways, through different dimensions.
- Culyt, on 05/18/2008, -0/+8I just dugg it π times.
- MxM111, on 05/17/2008, -3/+11I always was puzzled with people making hoopla about this golden ratio. Even if some ratio is very roughly 1.6. like the ratio between the length and width of face, they say: Oh! Behold The Golden Ratio! How do they know that it was intended to be 1.618 and not pi/2?
- idreamwideyed, on 05/17/2008, -0/+8that movie was fantastic.
- jjb123, on 05/17/2008, -0/+7He didn't, he just stated he knows why circles are preferred but not Fibonacci numbers.
- InTheBurbs, on 05/18/2008, -0/+7Thanks Yazoo! I'm Going to have that song stuck in my head all day now.
- JulyZerg, on 05/18/2008, -1/+8No one was made by "god". Just like no one was made by allah.
- inactive, on 05/17/2008, -0/+6i thought it was sort of strange that the ratio would be EXACTLY 1.618, because people aren't actually that proportional. Thanks for posting that link.
- thebrokenlight, on 05/17/2008, -0/+6You guys are really good at quoting movies.
- andrew606, on 05/17/2008, -5/+11did someone bring up tool yet?
if not,
tool. - greenblob, on 05/18/2008, -1/+7Biologists say that they're organic chemists. Organic chemists say that they're chemists. Chemists say that they're chemical physicists. Chemical physicists say that they're physicists. Physicists say that they're God. As for God, he claims to be a mathematician.
- johnnyashcan, on 05/17/2008, -0/+6Wow. One page of broken English and no pictures. There must be countless visual examples that he could have provided and there are none. Why is this on the front page of Digg?
- lamiaconfitor, on 05/18/2008, -0/+6But if there is a pattern and i don't immediately see why, it HAS to be magic! why are you oppressing my belief structure?
- inactive, on 05/17/2008, -2/+8god is a mathematician
- Hoprot, on 05/17/2008, -0/+6Logarithmic spirals - called 'the marvellous spiral' by Jakob Bernoulli - are actually the usual type of spiral shape found in nature. The golden spiral can be approximated by a logarithmic spiral, but many types of logarithmic spiral are more common in nature than the golden spiral. No one spiral defines all those found in nature. Logarithmic spirals describe things in nature either because of the geometrically increasing rotation and attraction towards the centre of a spiral galaxy or cyclone, or because when shells such as the nautilus grow they expand in an irregular extension with a common ratio of growth.
This article is inaccurate; the golden ratio is interesting, but it is not proof of God. Fibonacci discovered it when describing the growth of population of rabbits, using difference equations, the discrete analogue of differential equations. - monospaced, on 05/17/2008, -6/+11Great examples. Too bad it must be pointed out that these beautiful sequences account for a lot more than just shells, sunflower seed arrangements, and facial proportions; pretty much everything you see can be explained in a similar manner. Absolutely astounding.
- talonstriker, on 05/18/2008, -0/+5I agree with your comments. Seems like these people just went around looking for random places were the golden ratio occurs without providing any justification how or why the golden ratio effects the distance between two body parts. I'm not calling BS on the occurance of golden ratio in nature--only the measurements in this article.
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