Why the Phi...

Mmmm, s'pose so. I have picked up quite a bit along the way. We did do business arithmetic and human physiology - and I think not doing science made me more curious about it. I do have a problem with maths though. I find numbers completely confusing.

You only think you are thick because the system at the time encouraged you to think you were, Nfk. At the time only about 20% of pupils passed the 11+ because they only needed so many people in top jobs. They needed a lot of people to work in factories and not think too much about what they were missing out on.
Look at the problems now. 50% of the school-leavers can go onto university, and then will not take the menial jobs that might be available.
Make nursing an all-graduate profession and then get nurses who do not want to nurse.
Even in teaching they want to have only mathematics geniuses teaching maths to infants, and testing the kids on what they know at five years old.
I used to get fed up of teaching kids who had been told they could not spell when out of a thousand words they had perhaps made 3 or 4 mistakes. So I would have to build up their esteem by reminding them of how many words they had spelt correctly.
If you can look at a shell and see the spiral, you get it. If you can look at leaves on plants and see patterns in the way they spiral round the stem, that's enough. If you can look at a Georgian building and see that the windows are different sizes, but the whole building looks good, you do not need to know the ratios, or names or numbers.

I'm thick!
I failed the 11 plus and girls didn't do maths at my sec mod. Or science. I do try to understand, I'd like to, but generally end up thinking What the hell.

But it doesn't matter, does it?
If you believe in the Fibonacci series for simple things like the pattern of leaves and the area available for the sun and photosynthesis, you do not have to look at the planets and understand the big numbers. You just believe what the scientists tell you, that they follow the pattern.
Look at the stars and the planets, realise how insignificant we are in the universe and marvel that an Italian who died in about 1250 managed to work this series out and that someone now has managed to see that it applies to the galaxies, too. How amazing is that?
I just think that, if it happens on Earth, why shouldn't it happen in space?
I remember when we were first told about it in Environmental Science at College, we went around looking at various trees and plants to find out if it was true.

I must be a mathematical bod because I found that easy to follow. Seems to me that it is like music where apparently random notes and rhythms eventually come together in harmony and there is 'rightness' balance, synchronicity about it. Same thing applies to works of art, where the artist, unaware of mathematical principles, produces a masterpiece which is pleasing to the eye and later, a mathematician can explain why the choices, made by the artist for effect, nonetheless conform to established ratios and patterns.

I am hopeful that thanks to these open forums on t'internet, more people whose expertise and knowledge lie in other disciplines than mathematics, interact with the dedicated and highly trained maths bods, bringing new insights to the search for universal 'truths'. I am reminded of my honorary Aunt, a very clever lady who started as a machinist in a wool mill, became a pattern tester and ultimately, working from home when her children were small, devised and wrote the knitting patterns, working only from designer's drawings. She said it was EASY only basic mathematics (she started work at 14) and was always surprised that so few people could do it and no one seemed to understand her explanations. If you knitted Patons and Baldwins patterns back in the 50s and 60s then you have reason to be grateful to this fine woman.

Why did I even bother to look at the article - I knew in advance what it would be like - it would be like being a dog listening to a telephone call about statistics - just a bunch of noise!

Chuckle! I don't really understand all that blurb, though I like the idea – the universe seems to be a very mathematical place . I was thinking the article might appeal to Theseus (ariadne's OH) .

Have a look at this

www.goldennumber.net/spirals/

It's fascinating - at the simple level that I can understand - its when the numbers get hard and the pictures disappear that I lose it.

BTW your TV screen and the shape of many paintings follow this pattern. It's pleasing to the eye.

And that's all I'm going to say before thatbags pops up to correct my maths!

I have heard Fabonacci but for the life of me can't remember anything - obviously the brain cell with that information in has died! Never was any good with maths so kudos to those of you whose eyes don't glaze over when presented with a list of numbers

This confirms my belief that I am not a mathematical bod

I looked at the link and read Fibonacci and I thought 'Oh good, that's one bit of maths which I sort of understand' - its the sunflowers and the shells and all those lovely pictures. but what did I get? Pages of impenetrable data. Sob.

well that's exactly what through my mind just yesterday great minds ehhh.

me too baubles

Whoooshh!!!..........that was the sound of that article flying over my head