Math Dept: Numbers + Words = Poetry

logger Gregory K. Pincus, a screenwriter and aspiring children’s book author in Los Angeles, seems to have captured lightning in a bottle with his new form of mathematical poetry based on the Fibonacci sequence, a spiraling equation found almost everywhere you can look: Creating one of these poems is simultaneously simple and complex and devilishly fun.

The New York Times puts it succinctly:

“The number of syllables in each line must equal the sum of the syllables in the two previous lines. So, start with 0 and 1, add them together to get your next number, which is also 1, 2 comes next, then add 2 and 1 to get 3, and so on. Mr. Pincus structured the Fibs to top out at line six, with eight syllables.” Continued…

One
Small,
Precise
Poetic,
Spiraling mixture:
Math plus poetry yields the Fib.

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8

It’s the same golden ratio that you find repeatedly in nature within the patterns on a pine cone, seeds on a raspberry, spiral patterns in horns and shells and the surface of a pineapple. I’ll be posting my first Fib shortly.

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