We had a bit of a perfect storm during the morning. AND for a change it wasn’t the Yorkshire micro climate to blame.

MATHS

In particular number sequences. A whole 90 minutes dedicated to the little beauties. Geometric, Arithmetic, Square, Cube, Triangular, Fibonacci. I always remember thinking Fibonacci sounded like a really cool wrestler. The Maths Tutor didn’t find that thought very amusing.

For those who quite rightly have forgotten mathematics from school and college, the Fibonacci sequence is where the next number is the summation of the preceding two numbers. One of those things you are taught and will probably never need it. Fibonacci has only ever cropped up twice since school. Annoyingly not in the school exam. I remember giving one unfortunate External Consultant a bit of a frosty reception when he tried to convince me that I should be using Fibonacci to better manage agile teams at work. I think the poor chap learnt some new Yorkshire words and was then ushered out to annoy someone else.

The second time Fibonacci entered my world again was today. This morning we discovered that our son struggles with number sequences. He just can’t see the patterns. It wasn’t helped by the frequent use of decimal points to make the patterns even more pesky. Much frustration. Son couldn’t see the patterns at all and his dad could see the patterns BUT I struggled to describe them in words. Clearly one of those things I can do with out thinking but I’m not entirely convinced how I do it. Bit like trying to programme the washing machine.

But here’s the thing. I convinced son that it didn’t really matter. If sequences do come up in the exam then they won’t count for many marks. He can still have a stab at them and if all else fails, guess and move on to stuff that he will be able to do. And after his exam unless he meets many keen External Consultants, he is unlikely to need number sequences again. He’s better off learning stuff he wants to learn and stuff that he will use.

Let’s leave Fibonacci as a wrestling star.

69 thoughts on “Fibonacci”

  1. I love number patterns. It’s interesting that as an Aspie, he struggled with the pattern. It was probably his dyslexia interfering. Too bad… I learned Fibonacci from the movie Da Vinci Code😂😂 we didn’t learn it in school, and I went through Trigonometry (now called pre-calculus). I loved solving the puzzles of formulas. But I’ve never used any math beyond basic stuff a calculator can do. I honestly haven’t used most of what I learned in school.
    Has Hawklad thought about what he might like to do for work? Something with history would probably suit him.💌💌💌

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    1. It’s a trap made of sticky spagetti, spaggetti, spageti, spegetti
      (blinkin’ Nora what is it with spelling things today, oh wait, I think there’s a “H” in the mix) spaghetti “WOOHOO!”

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      2. Oh really Babasp, are you sure? as I thought there was only one way of spelling it, the first letter being “i” and the second “t”. {{{giggles}}}

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  9. I’m a successful person. I am successful in so many ways. Yet I struggle like your son with maths, number sequences and decimal points caused me to abandon going into medicine. I even struggled just now in my physical being to keep reading this post, because it was about MATHS, but because I felt it important to you my friend, I pushed through and decided to share with you.

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  10. I remember the non-verbal reasoning part of the 11 plus and then trying to help the boys with the same when they were going to do it. So difficult to explain what you can see to someone who can’t see it. That’s the same in many aspects of life actually! 🤔

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  11. here was me thinking from the title this would be about some fancy dietary substance… the name of a tree but hell, sequences. Truly i never understood how it was useful to work out what y equalled if x equalled whatever. Sequences???? well.. I rest my case.

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  16. Fibonacci patterns occur a lot in nature. And The Autistic Gardener uses them in his garden design planning. To make really cool spirals and such, though I don’t remember the details. Finding pattern in math were what lead me to realise I don’t actually hate math at all. Just math teachers.

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  18. I never knew that number patterns had been given names. Athough I had discovered many of those you listed for myself.

    One name I haven’t discovered is for the interesting phenomenon that when you add up the numbers of the product of any number multiplied by 9, the sum is always 9. For example 7 x 9 = 63; 6 + 3 = 9. 375 x 9 = 3375; 3 + 3 + 7 + 5 = 18; 1 + 8 = 9.

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      1. When i first discovered that phenomenon at about the age of seven, I became obsessed with finding exceptions to the rule. For a while it exasperated my parents no end as they’d find my scribbled calculations almost everywhere numbers could be seen. I recall that they bought at least 2 notebooks for me to do my calculations in.

        After I finally decided that the only exception to the rule was the number zero, I proudly announced my “9 times” discovery to my school teacher. My ego was quickly deflated when he responded “Yes, it’s amazing isn’t it? And 9 is the only number that works that way”.

        I’d just spent months proving a theory only to learn that it was already known. What a let down.

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  19. Oh what excellent dadding you did there 🙂 From school I extracted one relevant concept that has been useful if often terrifying: the difference between arithmetic and exponential progressions. ( I’m hoping this is iin the same field, roughly.)

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