Fibonacci Kilometers

 

I just learned a nifty little item a few days ago that only stuck out to me since I posted a bad math joke on Fibonacci numbers about a month ago.

 

First, a refresher for those mathematically challenged. Don’t worry; it’s pretty easy.

 

The Fibonacci sequence is a sequence of numbers obtained by adding the two prior to numbers together to get the next number in sequence. It starts with a 0 and 1, then you get the following:

 

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, …

 

It’s got about a billion uses in math and computer science and shows up in such various areas as nature, architecture, and the subject of beauty. I never got too deep into it in my college days a few decades back. Might look into it as an anti-Alzheimer’s medicine in a few years, though.

 

Anyway, when you take the ratio of a Fibonacci number with the one prior to it and go out through the sequence to infinity, that ratio closes in on 1.618…, or what’s called the Golden Ratio.

 

What’s special about this ratio is that it’s very close to the ratio between a kilometer and a mile. Since a mile is longer, for every mile you travel, you travel 1.609 kilometers. Very close to that 1.618.

 

So, to know how many kilometers you’ve traveled when you know how many miles you’ve traveled, simply go to the Fibonacci sequence above and move one number to the right.

 

For example, traveling 5 miles is equivalent to traveling 8 kilometers.

 

It goes in the opposite direction to convert kilometers to miles. If you’re in Europe and a city is 55 kilometers away, that translates to 34 miles in distance.

 

How neat is that?!