November 2011 Writing
Cold facts are easy to find. Thousands throng to
the Grey Cup Parade. Millions seek Tahrir Square. Seven billion and counting.
There are numbers everywhere in our environment. Scores
are regular mantras, especially now that number 87 has glided onto the
ice. And then there’s the ½ price realm.
Or we count how many days till the big one.
But where does all this numeralia come from? Since
we could scratch on cave walls we’ve been keeping track of things and events.
But there’s a great leap from a line in the sand to the mathematical equation.
I began my search and after a little visit to Google the Great, I found a math
man of the millennium.
For almost 800 years folks have called Fibonacci
the "greatest European mathematician of the middle ages." Fibonacci’s
full Italian name was Leonardo Pisano, indicating that he was born in
Pisa. He called himself Fibonacci which was short for Filius Bonacci,
"son of Bonacci", which was his father's name.
Fibonacci grew up in the North African town of
Bugia and travelled around the Mediterranean where he learned the Hindu-Arabic system
of arithmetic. He was one of the first to introduce this numbering system into
Europe. Using the base of ten digits, a decimal
point and a symbol for zero, it is the same system we use today. His 1202 book
on the decimal system, Liber abbaci, details all those rules for adding,
subtracting, multiplying and dividing.
Fibonacci was born in 1175 and lived until the
1240's. Today one can see a statue of him at the Leaning Tower end of the
cemetery next to the Cathedral in Pisa. Fibonacci discovered a unique phenomenon. He was
trying to solve a theoretical problem about the growth of a rabbit population. He
arranged a sequence wherein each number (rabbit) was the sum (offspring) of the
previous two. This pattern became
the Fibonacci series: 1, 1, 2,
3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181 and so
on. Then he calculated the ratio between the numbers. Since this turned
out to be the same answer each time, mathematicians called it the golden ratio.
It exists everywhere. For
every ¼ turn, a natural spiral widens by a factor of this golden ratio. We can
see it in
sunflowers, a
single cell, a beehive, a grain of wheat or the scales on a pineapple. How
about a galaxy? Artists, musicians and philosophers also adhere to the
mathematical axiom. Some even
claim parallels to the stock market!
Looking for Fibonacci sequences in nature can refresh
a late fall hike. Those brown crinkly ferns waiting for the weight of the snow,
the swirls in the sand after storm wave patterns leave their mark or the twists
in old cedars as they reach for the light could all fall under the influence of
Fibonacci’s find.
One element that I do know will
adhere to the golden ratio is the cone of the spruce, balsam and pine trees.
And this year there are THOUSANDS of them. Too many to resist, we’ve been
adding them to our basket of seasonal greenery. When they fall from the tree,
the cones are sticky and tight. But after a few days they widen into their
fragile, spiralled selves. We like to admire their possibilities. Fibonacci’s
golden ratio exists in their curly shape but the real glow is in their holiday
shine.
As we move towards this month of
lights within the darkness, the alchemy of numbers is tempting. Adding,
subtracting, multiplying then dividing is a logical diversion considering how
math seems to rule the world. But we’ve got to be careful. There could be
traps. Unless you’re listening to “Comfortably Numb”, you don’t want to get caught
up by the Numb Brrs.
