Posted by Jonathan on January 17, 2002, at 16:53:33
In reply to To Lou and Jonathan, posted by sid on January 17, 2002, at 8:00:24
> I'd never heard of a Fibonacci sequence before... but I guessed the pattern anyway.
Yes, the de Moivre-Binet formula is rather obvious - it's amazing that no-one thought of it before 1730 ;) Actually, guessing from so few terms that each is the sum of the previous two is impressive: I'm not sure if I could have done the same if I didn't already know some reasons why the sequence generated by this simple rule is so interesting.
> Thanks for all the web sites about math, I'll be having lots of fun with them !
It's nice to read the words `math' and `lots of fun' in the same sentence :) I'm glad you like the Fibonacci site. I found it independently, but am sorry I didn't notice earlier that IsoM had posted a link to it a couple of hours before I did; she deserves your thanks more than I do.
http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020112/msgs/16860.html
and I've just found your reply thanking her for this post!
As Ron Knott says, "Like many results in Mathematics, it is often not the original discoverer who gets the glory of having their name attached to the result, but someone later!"
http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibFormula.html#finder
Jonathan.
poster:Jonathan
thread:16798
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020112/msgs/16903.html