An interesting factoid: Fibonacci sequence and the Arabic numerals were introduced to the western world by Leonardo Fibonacci in the 13th century. He learnt about this when he travelled widely while travelling with his father (who was a merchant) to help him. The Fibonacci sequence was known to Indian mathematicians as early as the 6th century or before. And the Arabic numerals a.k.a the Hindu-Arabic numeral system was also popularized by him in his book Liber Abaci – Book of calculation where he talked about the “modus Indorum” or the method of the Indians to describe these numerals 0-9 and various other things which revolutionized European mathematics from its roman numeral system.
So what is the Fibonacci sequence? It is a sequence of numbers that begins with 1 and 1 where each number is a sum of the previous two.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55…..
as you get higher and higher in this sequence when you take a number and divide it by its predecessor (or its successor) you will approach what is known as the golden ratio … i.e 1:1.618 or 0.618:1. Why is this called a golden ratio? Because this ratio is found in many of the pleasing and aesthetic things in the nature, mathematics and art. For example the shape of a conch shell … the way it spirals outward or in the pentagram or the golden triangle, in flowers such as the Yellow Chamomile etc.
I was searching for Leonardo Fibonacci’s name on Google and I found this information in the Wikipedia pages. You can more information on this there.
Before Fibonacci, the sequence was discussed and presented a 50 years prior by Acharya Hemachandra and even before him by another mathematician by the name Gopala but I havent been able to find more information on him yet.
Try this … draw two adjoining squares… each say having 1 cm in length of the edge. Adjoining these with edges of both squares forming half of its side draw another square thats 2 cm in length. Then adjoining to the 2cm and 1 cm square draw another of 3 cm in length and continue this process. Then from each square draw an arc that connects the opposite corners and with a raidus equal to the length of the edge and continue on from one square to another. Does this shape look familiar? If my explanation is not clear enough check out this picture of the same …http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:FibonacciBlocks.svg.
