What am I reading?
May 27, 2012
The Man of Numbers by Keith Devlin. This is the story of Leonardo of Pisa, now known as Fibonacci, who essentially invented modern arithmetic. He took number out of the context of merely keeping track of things and set the stage for fields such as technology, design, and commerce to develop and prosper
“The change in society brought about by the teaching of modern arithmetic was so pervasive and all-powerful that within a few generations people simply took it for granted. There was no longer any recognition of the magnitude of the revolution that took the subject from an obscure object of scholarly interest to an everyday mental tool. Compared with Copernicus’s conclusions about the position of Earth in the solar system and Galileo’s discovery of the pendulum as a basis for telling time, Leonardo’s showing people how to multiply 193 by 27 simply lacks drama.“
Remember the Powers of Ten video? This is a similar concept, but explores the Fibonacci Sequence in nature:
I found this on Brain Pickings as I noodling around following links for the upcoming transit of Venus on June 5-6.
Gunsmoke and Knitting 
Leave a Reply