Spiral into the ‘golden ratio’ – and separate the myths from the maths

Named for the Italian mathematician Leonardo Bonacci (c1170-1240), the Fibonacci sequence refers to a numerical set that, usually starting with zero and one, adds the previous two integers together to arrive at the next (0,1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc). Play this sequence out long enough and the ratio of one number to the next will grow ever closer to 1.618 – or what’s often called the golden ratio.

As this short animation explores, over the centuries this sequence has been imbued with an almost mystical quality, purported to appear almost everywhere one looks in nature, underpinning some of the world’s most famous works of art, and naturally attractive to the human eye. Recently, this has even included smartphone apps claiming that the ratio holds the key to ideal facial proportions. Providing a brief history of the golden ratio, this piece separates the Fibonacci facts from the Fibonacci fibs, while making the argument that, even when demystified, there’s still something rather wondrous to the mathematics of it all.