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The Fibonacci Sequence
The Fibonacci Sequence
The story began in Pisa, Italy in the year 1202. Leonardo Pisano Bigollo was a
young man in his twenties, a member of an important trading family of Pisa. In his
travels throughout the Middle East, he was captivated by the mathematical ideas that
had come west from India through the Arabic countries. When he returned to Pisa he
published these ideas in a book on mathematics called Liber Abaci, which became a
landmark in Europe. Leonardo, who has since come to be known as Fibonacci, became
the most celebrated mathematician of the Middle Ages. His book was a discourse on
mathematical methods in commerce, but is now remembered mainly for two
contributions, one obviously important at the time and one seemingly insignificant.
The important one: he brought to the attention of Europe the Hindu system for
writing numbers. European tradesmen and scholars were still clinging to the use of the
old Roman numerals; modern mathematics would have been impossible without this
change to the Hindu system, which we call now Arabic notation, since it came west
through Arabic lands.
The other: hidden away in a list of brain-teasers , Fibonacci posed the following
question:
If a pair of rabbits is placed in an enclosed area, how many rabbits will be born there
if we assume that every month a pair of rabbits produces another pair, and that rabbits
begin to bear young two months after their birth?
This apparently innocent little question has as an answer a certain sequence of
numbers, known now as the Fibonacci sequence, which has turned out to be one of the
most interesting ever written down. It has been rediscovered in an astonishing variety
of forms, in branches of mathematics way beyond simple arithmetic. Its method of
development has led to far-reaching applications in mathematics and computer science.
So, one amoeba becomes two, two become 4, then 8, 16, 32, and so on.
• An =2An
Now in the Fibonacci rabbit situation, there is a lag factor; each pair requires some
time to mature. So we are assuming
If you were to try this in your backyard, here's what would happen:
Now draw a few more lines:
The pattern we see here is that each cohort or generation remains as part of the next,
and in addition, each grown-up pair contributes a baby pair. The number of such baby
pairs matches the total number of pairs in the previous generation. Symbolically
• fn = number of pairs during month n
• fn = fn-1 + fn-2
Now let's look at another reasonably natural situation where the same sequence
"mysteriously" pops up. Go back 350 years to 17th century France. Blaise Pascal is a
young Frenchman, scholar who is torn between his enjoyment of geometry and
mathematics and his love for religion and theology. In one of his more worldly moments
he is consulted by a friend, a professional gambler, the Chevalier de Mé ré , Antoine
Gombaud. The Chevalier asks Pascal some questions about plays at dice and cards, and
about the proper division of the stakes in an unfinished game. Pascal's response is to
invent an entirely new branch of mathematics, the theory of probability. This theory has
grown over the years into a vital 20th century tool for science and social science.
Pascal's work leans heavily on a collection of numbers now called Pascal's Triangle,
and represented like this:
Next, notice what happens when we add up the numbers in each row - we get our
doubling sequence.
Now for visual convenience draw the triangle left-justified. Add up the numbers
on the various diagonals ...
Fibonacci could not have known about this connection between his rabbits and
probability theory - the theory didn't exist until 400 years later.
What is really interesting about the Fibonacci sequence is that its pattern of
growth in some mysterious way matches the forces controlling growth in a large variety
of natural dynamical systems. Quite analogous to the reproduction of rabbits, let us
consider the family tree of a bee - so we look at ancestors rather than descendants. In a
simplified reproductive model, a male bee hatches from an unfertilized egg and so he
has only one parent, whereas a female hatch from a fertilized egg, and has two parents.
Here is the family tree of a typical male bee:
Notice that this looks like the bunny chart, but moving backwards in time. The
male ancestors in each generation form a Fibonacci sequence, as do the female
ancestors, as does the total. You can see from the tree that bee society is female
dominated.
The most famous and beautiful examples of the occurrence of the Fibonacci
sequence in nature are found in a variety of trees and flowers, generally asociated with
some kind of spiral structure. For instance, leaves on the stem of a flower or a branch
of a tree often grow in a helical pattern, spiraling aroung the branch as new leaves form
further out. Picture this: You have a branch in your hand. Focus your attention on a
given leaf and start counting around and outwards. Count the leaves, and also count the
number of turns around the branch, until you return to a position matching the original
leaf but further along the branch. Both numbers will be Fibonacci numbers.
For example, for a pear tree there will be 8 leaves and 3 turns. Here are some
more examples:
You can take a walk in a park and find this pattern on plants and bushes quite
easily.
Pine cones are also constructed in a spiral fashion, small ones having commonly
with 8 spirals one way and 13 the other. The most interesting is the pineapple - built
from adjacent hexagons, three kinds of spirals appear in three dimensions. There are 8
to the right, 13 to the left, and 21 vertically - a Fibonacci triple.
Why should this be? Why has Mother Nature found an evolutionary advantage
in arranging plant structures in spiral shapes exhibiting the Fibonacci sequence?
Running through the centers of the squares in order with a smooth curve we
obtain the nautilus spiral = the sunflower spiral.
This is a special spiral, a self-similar curve which keeps its shape at all scales (if
you imagine it spiraling out forever). It is called equiangular because a radial line from
the center makes always the same angle to the curve. This curve was known to
Archimedes of ancient Greece, the greatest geometer of ancient times, and maybe of all
time.
Fibonacci Proportions
Using the traditional name for this number, the Greek letter ("phi") we can
write symbolically:
Here are some other strange but fascinating expressions that can be derived:
Using this golden ratio as a foundation, we can build an explicit formula for the
Fibonacci numbers:
But the Greeks had a more visual point of view about the golden mean. They
asked: what is the most natural and well-proportioned way to divide a line into 2 pieces?
They called this a section. The Greeks felt strongly that the ideal should match the
proportion between the parts with that of the parts to the whole. This results in a
proportion of exactly .
Forming a rectangle with the sections of the line as sides results in a visually
pleasing shape that was the basis of their art and architecture. This esthetic was adopted
by the great Renaissance artists in their painting, and is still with us today.