8 ms·

Fibonacci Flim Flam

77 points by blowski 11y ago

slr555 11y ago
I am not much of a mathematician but I know a little about art and photography. Generally this piece was well written and I don't doubt a lot of it. Two comments though: Using pictures of swimsuit models is a potentially deeply flawed methodology. Photoshop is of course liberally applied to these images and proportions of many aspects (leg length and waist length being perhaps the most germane here) are thus distorted. In regards to painting and the arts in general, people talk about the rule of thirds or the golden spiral but artists are not so good about sticking to "rules". The general principle may apply but no one is measuring. Remember that engineers designed guitar amplifiers originally not to cause distortion. Everything changed when Link Wray put a pencil through the cone of his cabinet. ;)
- jMyles 11y ago
  > Using pictures of swimsuit models is a potentially deeply flawed methodology. Photoshop is of course liberally applied to these images and proportions of many aspects (leg length and waist length being perhaps the most germane here) are thus distorted. What's the flawed methodology? I understood the author to be making the same point you're making here.
  - slr555 11y ago
    I was being a bit facetious but I was making the point that the distortions introduced by photo manipulation may not truly allow one to make the extrapolations about height the author alludes too. But as I say, my intended tone was tongue in cheek.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tgb 11y ago
Or, if you don't have the patience to give this mumbo-jumbo the benefit of the doubt, just see this: https://xkcd.com/spiral/ https://xkcd.com/spiral/
jMyles 11y ago
I'm not sure what point the author is trying to make. That other patterns, aside from Fibonacci numbers, are found in nature? That washing machines obey laws of gravity and make spirals similar to some that are found in nature? That photoshop exists? That artists use 'rules' as guidelines only? That greedy people will use really stupid ways to trick people into buying things? This is written as if it's supposed to be an indictment of sorts, but after reading it, I'm no less interested in Fibonacci numbers, their occurrence (alongside other patterns) in nature, or the incredible contributions of a man who brought advanced Indian and Arabic math back home to white people who were still using Roman numerals. Lots of source and good explorations of them, but this did nothing to show me that Fibonacci numbers are, in a general sense, "flim flam."
- jameshart 11y ago
  The point was, I thought, that Fibonacci numbers don't appear in nature, and nor does the golden ratio. Spirals, yes; logarithmic growth patterns, yes; fixed ratios, yes; but Fibonacci... no, not specifically. Did you have an example in mind where you believe the Fibonacci sequence actually does crop up, naturally?
  - jMyles 11y ago
    Really? It's like we're reading a different article. The author says several times that, sure, spirals that approximately but predictably implement the golden ratio exist, but so do others. As if that's supposed to convince the reader of something. I took this to be the thesis: > We have noted above that not all spirals in mathematics or in nature are golden spirals. Likewise, spirals can be produced by non-biological processes if the discrete elements which make up the spiral are laid down according to some simple rules. The problem for biologists is to find those rules. Merely asserting that "nature seems to prefer fibonacci numbers" (most of the time, in certain particular cases) isn't an explanation. If this is the "flim flam" that's being debunked, it's blaspheming a religion with no followers.
    - jules 11y ago
brudgers 11y ago
Fibonacci numbers are so appealing to our human propensity to see patterns that they have their own quarterly published continuously for more than 50 years. http://www.fq.math.ca/ http://www.fq.math.ca/ Fibonacci illustrated the sequence using the growth of a rabbit population, though one where rabbit immortality was assumed. As Knuth says: Fibonacci numbers have often been observed in nature, probably for reasons similar to the original assumptions of the rabbit problem. [TAoCP: Volume 1, 2nd edition.p 79]
t2015_08_25 11y ago
Awesome posting. I feel the same way about people advocating tuning music to 432 Hz (as opposed to 440 Hz). Even the Pythagoreans, who saw a few interested patterns in numbers, fell prey to the desire to see mathematical patterns everywhere.

77 points by blowski 11y ago

I am not much of a mathematician but I know a little about art and photography. Generally this piece was well written and I don't doubt a lot of it. Two comments though: Using pictures of swimsuit models is a potentially deeply flawed methodology. Photoshop is of course liberally applied to these images and proportions of many aspects (leg length and waist length being perhaps the most germane here) are thus distorted. In regards to painting and the arts in general, people talk about the rule of thirds or the golden spiral but artists are not so good about sticking to "rules". The general principle may apply but no one is measuring. Remember that engineers designed guitar amplifiers originally not to cause distortion. Everything changed when Link Wray put a pencil through the cone of his cabinet. ;)

jMyles 11y ago
> Using pictures of swimsuit models is a potentially deeply flawed methodology. Photoshop is of course liberally applied to these images and proportions of many aspects (leg length and waist length being perhaps the most germane here) are thus distorted. What's the flawed methodology? I understood the author to be making the same point you're making here.
- slr555 11y ago
  I was being a bit facetious but I was making the point that the distortions introduced by photo manipulation may not truly allow one to make the extrapolations about height the author alludes too. But as I say, my intended tone was tongue in cheek.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tgb 11y ago

Or, if you don't have the patience to give this mumbo-jumbo the benefit of the doubt, just see this: https://xkcd.com/spiral/ https://xkcd.com/spiral/

jMyles 11y ago

I'm not sure what point the author is trying to make. That other patterns, aside from Fibonacci numbers, are found in nature? That washing machines obey laws of gravity and make spirals similar to some that are found in nature? That photoshop exists? That artists use 'rules' as guidelines only? That greedy people will use really stupid ways to trick people into buying things? This is written as if it's supposed to be an indictment of sorts, but after reading it, I'm no less interested in Fibonacci numbers, their occurrence (alongside other patterns) in nature, or the incredible contributions of a man who brought advanced Indian and Arabic math back home to white people who were still using Roman numerals. Lots of source and good explorations of them, but this did nothing to show me that Fibonacci numbers are, in a general sense, "flim flam."

jameshart 11y ago
The point was, I thought, that Fibonacci numbers don't appear in nature, and nor does the golden ratio. Spirals, yes; logarithmic growth patterns, yes; fixed ratios, yes; but Fibonacci... no, not specifically. Did you have an example in mind where you believe the Fibonacci sequence actually does crop up, naturally?
- jMyles 11y ago
  Really? It's like we're reading a different article. The author says several times that, sure, spirals that approximately but predictably implement the golden ratio exist, but so do others. As if that's supposed to convince the reader of something. I took this to be the thesis: > We have noted above that not all spirals in mathematics or in nature are golden spirals. Likewise, spirals can be produced by non-biological processes if the discrete elements which make up the spiral are laid down according to some simple rules. The problem for biologists is to find those rules. Merely asserting that "nature seems to prefer fibonacci numbers" (most of the time, in certain particular cases) isn't an explanation. If this is the "flim flam" that's being debunked, it's blaspheming a religion with no followers.
  - jules 11y ago

brudgers 11y ago

Fibonacci numbers are so appealing to our human propensity to see patterns that they have their own quarterly published continuously for more than 50 years. http://www.fq.math.ca/ http://www.fq.math.ca/ Fibonacci illustrated the sequence using the growth of a rabbit population, though one where rabbit immortality was assumed. As Knuth says: Fibonacci numbers have often been observed in nature, probably for reasons similar to the original assumptions of the rabbit problem. [TAoCP: Volume 1, 2nd edition.p 79]

t2015_08_25 11y ago

Awesome posting. I feel the same way about people advocating tuning music to 432 Hz (as opposed to 440 Hz). Even the Pythagoreans, who saw a few interested patterns in numbers, fell prey to the desire to see mathematical patterns everywhere.