Mar. 16th, 2008

luckykaa: (Default)
So, from that meme,

"Other People" as requested by [profile] emmzi.

There are lots of other people of course.  So let's talk about some people who live near me. 

There's my old friend Peate, and my parents.

He really likes his car.  A juicy Skoda Octavia, which he occasionally upgrades slightly.  The result of this is that there are occasionally car parts in his flat.  He likes Belgian beer and makes a mean spaghetti bolognese.

My mum is retiring this year.  She wants to find a job to keep active.  Her biggest fear is only having old people to talk about.  The old people she knows seem to talk about ailments and whether they like apples.  So she's looking for post retirement work, and took a course to be a tour guide.  This weekend she got to try out her new skillz by tour guiding some American students around London.  Turns out the group leaders didn't think to bring any British currency with them.  She's currently planning a Wild West themed 60th birthday party.  For some reason her friends seem to think she's a bit nutty. 

My dad is highly skilled ad DIY, and horribly disorganised.  He's adding flooring to the attic.  This will be a beautiful piece of engineering but procrastination will mean it will take some time.  Still, doing stuff seems to make him happy.  He really should have retired years ago.  He's a teacher and seems to find his work rather stressful despite being semi retired and in a position where he really shouldn't care.
luckykaa: (Default)
Also from that meme; A Mathematical proof, as requested by [personal profile] pixiequeen10thk  .

but I'll go for a simple one about the Fibonacci sequence.

The Fibonacci sequence is somewhat on my mind following a bizarre email conversation. I'll add go slowly with heaps of extra detail for non mathematicians.
Now, the Fibonacci sequence looks something like this:
1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34, ....

That is, each value is equal to the sum of the previous two values. This sequence is of great interest to Greek architects because if you take one value and use it for height, then take the next value for width, the proportions will look right. So what is the ratio of two sequential terms if we extend this sequence really far? Well, this value is called phi ( ø ). It turns out that it's roughly 1.61803. Don't believe me? Well, okay - here's the proof.

At a section of the sequence, three terms are a, b, c. we know c = a + b so we can write this as a, b, a+b.

Our value ø = b/a so our sequence becomes
    a, a×b/a, a, a+a×b/a
or
    a, øa, a + øa

The ratio between b and c is going to be ø again.
b = øa and c = a + øa so the ratio between øa and a + øa is also going to be ø.
so our sequnce can be written as
    a, øa, ø2a
The last value is equal in both sequences so:
    a + øa = ø2a
and the 'a's cancel out
    1 + ø = ø2
    ø2 - 1 - ø = 0
We can use the quadratic formula
    (-b ± √(b2-4ac))/2a
to give
    ø = (-(-1) ± √(-1×-1)-(4×1×-1))/(2×1)
        = 1±
√(1+4)/2
        = 1/2 +
√5/2
        = 1.618033988749894848204586834366
(ish)
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