Saturday, January 22, 2011

Fibonacci and life (part I)

I chose Fibonacci's sequence as a starting point of my blog for several reasons:
  1. It's plain (no tricks);
  2. It branches into our day-to-day living in surprising ways.
So let's give it a go: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, ... can you see the pattern? Yup! You got it, starting from 2 all the terms of the sequence are the sum of the previous two (1+1=2, 1+2=3, ...). Now where does real life kick in? You've all heard about the saying "breeding like rabbits", but never imagined the mathematical extents of it:
  • first we buy a male rabbit and a female rabbit (no gender discrimination intended) (1 pair);
  • the first month they have no baby rabbits (not mature enough) (1 pair);
  • the second month they have two baby rabbits, a male and female (2 pairs);
  • the third month the original pair has two more baby rabbits (male and female), their first babies are not mature yet so they have none (3 pairs); 
  • the fourth month both the original pair and their first pair of babies (yeah, I know, they mate family, the animals!) have each one pair of babies (5 pairs);
  • a.s.o. many, many rabbits.
Luckily for us there is such thing as natural selection through predators, disease or genetics and the math does not ensure rabbits' world domination.

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