Today's blogging prompt is to write about your favorite number. I thought that would make for a very brief blog post. "My favorite number is 27 because I was born on the 27th of the month. If there were no number 27, I could have never been born because my birth date would have magically vanished, and I would have vanished, too, and that's it. The end."
Sooooo.... how about a bunch of numbers?? And I could tie this whole bunch of numbers into two of my favorite things, art and nature? First, I have to say that, when I was in school, my least favorite subject was math. I know that a lot of people say that. So, for years, I thought that I was BAD AT MATH. I didn't realize that I was actually doing math every single day, mainly because I equated math with tedious worksheets.
I didn't equate math with measuring ingredients in a baking project or with figuring out the perspective when drawing or painting. I didn't even think that I was doing math when I figured out how much money I needed at the store to pay for some purchase. That is how conditioned I was to the concept of math as tedium.
I slowly began to realize that math and numbers were anything but tedium when I read about how sunflowers are the perfect example of mathematics in nature.
They are perfect because they follow the fibonacci sequencing of numbers in how their seeds are sequenced.
The fibonacci sequence of numbers goes like this 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610...and on and on it goes.
As you can see, started with the second one, each digit is the sum of the previous two digits. It is very conceivable that the fibonacci series has no end. One could keep calculating these digits forever. Anyway, I probably can't describe exactly how it is that sunflower seeds follow fibonacci sequencing. For more information about that, here is a link to an interesting article: "Nature blows my mind!!!"
Do you have a favorite number? Is it good luck for you? If so, please mention it in the comments section below!
4 comments:
I am right there with you about having hated math. Then my son’s father showed me practical applications when he said that teachers could make trigonometry interesting if they used the game of billiards to teach it. I still find certain aspects of math challenging, but I think that is simply because I’ve programmed myself to believe language arts are easier for me.
What a wonderful post. Thank you, Alice!
Alice, what a great conversion you had, from math hater to math integrator! And you are the first person I know whose favorite number is 27. But I get it :-). My favorite number is 13, for even more reasons than I put in my post for Day 13 (I think you saw it). I never heard that before, about sunflowers following the Fibonacci sequence. Fun!
Hey Alice,
Unlike you, I've always liked math. I even taught high school math in my native country (back in another life 😁). My thoughts on children not liking math include them having a terrible teacher who didn't know how to make the subject come alive to them and make it relevant to everyday life, and one who just didn't know how to teach it.
I taught arithmetic progression and geometric progression but didn't even know about Fibonacci Numbers. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. As I usually do when I find out about new things, I looked it up. Among some other amazing things, I was fascinated to find out that when we make squares with those adjacent numbers, we get a nice spiral.
Nature is full of spirals made by Fibonacci Numbers - leaves, branches, petals, to name a few. This, to me, is evidence that this earth was made by the intelligent design of someone greater than man. Thanks for this interesting article.
Love the Fibonacci Sequence, love the Twin Prime Conjecture and love pi. Taking Flo's point, I especially love that these anomalies have all been OBSERVED, then defined and further made applicable by the lauded agile brains of creatures designed by THE UNKNOWABLE.
Holy-moly, it blows my mind and makes me think "How great thou art"and who or what the heck art thou!
All because Alice loves sunflowers!
Deb
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