toilet math
well, i just got older, and this lovely math book was a gift from the ever toiletry-minded loo. this morning i was excited to learn about fibonacci numbers. you wanna know what i learned? great! (thought you'd never ask...)

take any two numbers, let's say 3 and 17. add them together. this gives you the third number in the series, 20. now add 17 and 20 together. this gives you the fourth number, 37. continue adding numbers in this way until you have a series of 10 numbers.

(ok, here's the exciting part.)

the sum of all 10 numbers is a gnarly bit of addition, eh? nope! all you have to do is multiply the 7th number by 11.

so using our series above: 3, 17, 20, 37, 57, 94, 151, 245, 396, 641.

3+17+20+37+57+94+151+245+396+641 = 151x11 = 1661

cool, eh? well, kinda. turns out, like much else that's been incorrectly attributed, this knowledge predates Fibonacci in India. [From Wikipedia: "Pingala's work also contains the basic ideas of Fibonacci number (called maatraameru)."]

and yes. i also learned the proof for this cool trick, but i'll spare you from that bit o' geekiness (unless you really must know). but learning on the toilet! that's multitasking...
Labels: 37, birthday, fibonacci, geeky, math, numbers, pingala, random, toilet humor

:: ewee 9:57:00 AM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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