15 Uncanny Examples of the Golden Ratio in Nature: “”
UPDATE: Matt counters with Fibonacci Flim-Flam! Well played, Matt!
A somewhat cynical footnote.
The internet is cluttered with “educational” sites that have documents on “Fibonacci numbers in nature” and similar topics. A corresponedent suggested a reason for this, which resonated with my own experience in the “ed-biz”. Perhaps this is the result of the current climate in education in which teachers are under great pressure to pander to student feelings and interests. Students continually ask for reasons for studying academic subjects—reasons that will convince students of the relevance of that subject to their own narrow interests and egocentric perspective. The idea of being interested in something for its own sake is a foreign concept to them. So some teachers go out of their way to “invent” relevance, even if it is a fragile and tenuous relevance. To show that some part of mathematics is relevant to nature, art, or the location of navels, serves that purpose. In doing this, some textbook writers and teachers often display their own shallowness of thought.