1.618

Originally posted by mwm1331
Grnted its been a while since I have done any math that didn't involve dollar signs and financial reports are all straight forward basic math but why am I thinking 3.1416 is such n important number?

Pi = 3.14... It's the ratio of the circumference of any circle to its diameter -- no matter how large or small the circle is, the ratio will always be 3.14... It's one of the contsant numbers that occurs in nature; pi occurs naturally practially everywhere, especially (and obviously) in conic sections, trigonometry, and calculus.

Just for fun, here's an interesting equation to ponder -- it's made up completely of natural constants!

e ^ (i*pi) = 1

i = sqrt(-1), which is the imaginary number.

Originally posted by MacKiller
The most beautiful number!

If you start with the numbers 0 and 1, and make a list in which each new number is the sum of the previous two, you get a list like this:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, ... to infinity-->

This is called a Fibonacci series.
If you then take the ratio of any two sequential numbers in this series, you'll find that it falls into an increasingly narrow range:

1/0 = Whoa! That one doesn't count.
1/1 = 1
2/1 = 2
3/2 = 1.5
5/3 = 1.6666...
8/5 = 1.6
13/8 = 1.625
21/13 = 1.61538...
34/21 = 1.61904...
and so on, with each addition coming ever closer to multiplying by some as-yet-undetermined number.

The number that this ratio is oscillating around is phi (1.6180339887499...). It's interesting to note that the ratio 21/13 differs from phi by less than .003, and 34/21 by only about .001 (less than 1/10 of one percent!), thus providing our less technically-advanced ancestors an easy way to derive phi on a large scale in the real world with a high degree of precision.

The number also appears in nature all the time!

The relationship of males and females in a honeybee colony. If you divide the number of females by males in any colony, you always get the same number. 1.618!

Sunflower seeds grow in spirals. the ratio of each rotation's diameter is... 1.618!

Next time you are in the shower, take a tape measure.

Measure the distance of the top of your head to the floor and divide the distance from your belly button to the floor.

Shoulder to you fingertips, then divide it by you elbow to your fingertips.

Hip to floor divided by knee to floor.

Finger joints.

Toes.

Spinal divisions.

EVERYTHING IS EQUAL TO PHI!!!

Truly an amazing number.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Good boy,you are like me. I invented the wheel??!!

Buy that book and you will understand more,more...

" The story of Mathematics"--Richard Mankiewicz--2000

Castel & co . London----$ 14.70

bonne lecture regards chapo

PS NO SARCASME

phi (golden ratio) was also used to make golden rectangles, the ratio being the ratio between length and width. the greeks, i believe, did this and the romans jacked it. as always.

phi, e, pi. gotta love em. e comes up a lot in nature as well, hence ln (logarithme naturale/natural logarithm) being the natural number, go figure. sea shells curve out relating to e, petals and snowflakes often use 'functions' so to speak of e.