Fibonaturally.
20:55
For a quick background, the Fibonacci spiral is this:
Each arc joins two ends of a square, whose each side length is the corresponding number in the Fibonacci sequence. Basically, the first square has side length 1, second, 1, third, 2, fourth, 3, fifth, 5 and so on. The idea is that this spiral is everywhere:
Image courtesy: scm.ulster.ac.uk
Image courtesy: richardnilsen.com
Image courtesy: io9.com
You get the point. Well, if you would read up on this on the internet, you would find several examples, and you would probably conclude that this recurrence of an arbitrary series of numbers, in a random representation seems to fit everything. Why?
Well, first of all, it is actually not that often observed. There are trillions of things out there in the world, so being find a thousand things that fit the Fibonacci spiral is a very believable and fairly mundane probability. It’s a funny thing we humans do, we are so good at finding patterns, for example, find the next number in these series:
2, 5, 8, 11…
3, 6, 9, 12…
1, 4, 9, 16…
You probably answered these instantly, without thinking twice about it. Your brain instantly found a pattern in the four numbers. This ability is great, it’s the reason math is what it is, we observe patterns, interpret them, build on them, that’s what math is. But sometimes, it works against us. We tend to find patterns where they don’t even exist. Forcefully project theory onto reality. The Fibonacci spiral is an example of this. As famously said in the 2012 American film, ‘Now You See Me’, “… the closer you look, the lesser you see’, the closer you look, the more fooled you’re going to be.
So remember, the next time you see an unbelievable recurrence of a pattern, it’s good to put it into perspective.
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