Fibonacci

I have just finished reading The DaVinci Code, the book that has sparked off so much controversy. I found it an interesting read, even though it is far from the best written book I have read. It makes much of symbolism and at one point brings in the Fibonacci Sequence, the remarkable infinite series of numbers that begins 1,1, 2. 3, 5, 8 and continues by adding the last number to the preceeding one. The numbers that are generated crop up continually in the natural world.

Closely related to the Fibonacci series is theThe Golden Ratio (PhI). This is defined as a number that is equal to its own recoprocal plus 1 and is generally taken as 1:1618. It is however an irrational number that cannot be finally expressed. Some years ago it was calculated to ten million places. Although my computer can't quite cope with that I thought it would be amusing to see how near I could get!

Using a simple spreadsheet it is extremely easy to generate a series of Fibonacci numbers and at the same time to calculate their ratios. My spreadsheet can only cope with nine places of decimals. I found that the 25th number in the series was 75025 and the ratio with the preceeding number was 1.618033989. I was pleased to find that text books agree with me. From then on, however far I went, the number remained the same. By the time I reached the 44th in the series the Fibonacci numberr had grown to over 701 millions, but so far as my computer was concerned the ratio remained exactly the same.

You are probably wondering why I am bothering you with all this! It is only that I thought you might like to know thatI found out how to have fun with a spreadsheet and that you might come up with something a lot better.