October 6th, 2016

Fibonacci forever…

by Bannerman, Gradisher, Konar, Lawton, Epstein & Piro

Hello out there. Today’s cartoon is brought to you by the mathematician Leonardo Pisano aka Fibonacci. And although Fibonacci was around long before passwords and computers, he was the guy who created the Fibonacci sequence—an infinite pattern of numbers where every other number is the sum of the previous two numbers, i.e., 1,1,2,3,5,8,13 etc. And since we’re talking cartoons and art, Fibonacci’s sequence also has a special relationship to a number pattern known as the golden ratio or golden mean (phi). And that same golden ratio was/is used in art, architecture and nature to create what is often considered the most appealing of proportion and composition to the human eye. So next time your looking at a work of art or architecture or maybe even a cartoon, see if you can identify the golden ratio. Now, I wonder if the Fibonacci in the cartoon will ever finish entering his password…Cheers, Susan