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[-] lauha@lemmy.world 167 points 1 year ago

This is because fibonacci numbers approach golden ratio which is approximately 1,618033... and one mile is 1,609344 kilometres exactly.

[-] Oisteink@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago
[-] lauha@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago
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[-] TheBat@lemmy.world 100 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[-] atro_city@fedia.io 42 points 1 year ago

Nah, that's too difficult for USAians. They can memorize fibonacci numbers much more easily.

[-] WALLACE@feddit.uk 17 points 1 year ago

Be like us Brits and measure short distances in metric, long distances in Imperial, yet struggle to convert between them.

GPS navigation gets frustrating. It's either metric "turn left in 4km" when all road signs and speeds are in miles, or imperial "turn in 200ft" when you have no idea how long 200ft is.

[-] ITGuyLevi@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago

I never understood the use of yards for exits over there, but the hardest part was figuring out what my GP meant when he said I needed to lose a couple 'stones'... C'mon, you can't expect me to learn imperial, metric, and whatever the hell that is.

I'm already stuck having to be able to convert between elephants and F-250's because my homeland REFUSES the metric system, now I have to study geology just to figure out how unhealthy I am (actually was, I've lost 40lbs since then).

[-] davidagain@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Stones are imperial. There are 14 pounds in a stone. Obviously it's the right unit for people's weight because who wouldn't want to share the weight of a human equally seven ways, eh?

[-] brotundspiele@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

My kidney stones are imperial too.

There are 14 pounds in a stone.

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[-] fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The idea the average Joe even knows of them... (edit: was thinking of Fibonacci, but even km are in doubt these days)

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[-] Aeao@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Hey I’m going to have to ask you to censor that word. There’s American children on this ap! We can’t have them going to the playground and repeating that kind of language.

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[-] altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
H A T E S P E E C H
🚨🚨 A L E R T 🚨🚨
[-] gnawmon@ttrpg.network 31 points 1 year ago
[-] Landless2029@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

And yet the military uses "clicks"

[-] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago

0.54 nmi (nautical miles)

[-] ExperimentalGuy@programming.dev 21 points 1 year ago

This is such a cool example of how some recursive algorithms have a closed form. We all know that there's a simple equation to plug miles into to get kilometers, but we don't talk about how the Fibonacci sequence has a closed form. This is so cool.

[-] angrystego@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Wjat does closed form mean? Asking as a stupid botanist, sorry.

[-] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Closed form means it can be written out as a specific, finite set of instructions that work the same regardless of what the input to your function is.

For Fibonacci, it is most commonly defined in its recursive form:

f(0) = 0
f(1) = 1
f(x) = f(x-1) + f(x-2) for integer x > 1

But using this form, computing a very large Fibonacci number requires computing all the numbers before it, so it’s not the same finite set of instructions for every number, it takes more computation to generate larger numbers.

However, there is a closed form formula for generating Fibonacci numbers. Using this formula, you can directly compute any large Fibonacci number without having to compute all those intermediate steps. It takes the same amount of work to compute any Fibonacci number.

f(x) = (a^x - b^x)/√5
a = (1+√5)/2
b = (1-√5)/2

(Note that a and b here are constants; I only wrote them separately to avoid a mess of nested parenthesis)

For an example of something that doesn’t have a closed form, we do not know of a closed form for generating prime numbers. There are several known algorithms for generating the nth prime number, but they all depend on computing all the previous prime numbers, making it very difficult to compute very large prime numbers (in fact, how generating large primes is actually done is by making an educated guess and then checking that it’s actually prime). Discovering a closed form formula for prime numbers would have a huge impact on mathematics and cryptography.

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[-] ramble81@lemmy.zip 14 points 1 year ago

To go from km to mi I always leaned “multiply by 6 and move the decimal one to the left”. So 6km is ~3.6mi. Or 10km is just about 6mi.

[-] davidagain@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Yes. That uses the 3:5 ratio.

[-] pupbiru@aussie.zone 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

or add half and then 10% (because it’s 1.6km to the mile): easier than multiplying decimals or large numbers by 6, and the inverse is 0.6mi=1km so easy to remember both ways (same thing but don’t “add” just start from 0)

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[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Interesting, but if I have to look up a conversion I’ll just look up the actual conversion rather than an approximation.

[-] Hufschmid@sopuli.xyz 9 points 1 year ago

Why have brain when have computer

[-] pyre@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

thanks to "AI" being in everything more and more computers are starting to perform worse than brain

[-] CompassRed@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago

The point is you don't have to look it up. Fibonacci is really easy to compute in your head.

[-] Huschke@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

I always used "a little more than half".

[-] Sir_Premiumhengst@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Works because ratio of km to miles is about the golden ratio.

[-] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 6 points 1 year ago

isnt it easier to give them simple conversions 1mi=0.6km.

[-] SacralPlexus@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Might want to check your units.

[-] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's rough estimation, a deviation of anything less than 50% is accurate enough for that

Edit: Ooh I thought you were trying to "um actually, it's 1.66", but I just realised they put 0.6 instead of 1.6

[-] pupbiru@aussie.zone 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

or for in your head maths: half + 10%

(though it’s 1km=0.6mi, 1mi=1.6km)

[-] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

Cool! I wish I would have known this in the 70's when Canada changed over from British Imperial units to the Metric system. Maybe this is the incentive needed to push the usa into the rest of the metric system world!

[-] Mycatiskai@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago

If every measurement being a factor of ten of a smaller or bigger unit isn't going to convince Americans of the ease of metric then the Fibonacci sequence isn't going to convince them.

[-] RickyRigatoni@retrolemmy.com 4 points 1 year ago

That's the spirit.

Give it the ol college "why?"

[-] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ah yes, I always remember the Fibonacci sequence and totally wouldn't find it harder to calculate than just doing the conversion the regular way

/sarcasm

[-] Gloomy@mander.xyz 5 points 1 year ago

But woudn't you only need the 3 = 5 part?

[-] Dumhuvud@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago

"Remember"? Do you also remember all the digits of π?

It's defined as F(0) = 0, F(1) = 1 and F(n) = F(n - 1) + F(n - 2). Which makes more sense than imperial units.

[-] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Or I could just do 1.6 km ≈ 1 mile whenever I need to convert from the standard that I use, Metric, to Imperial

Far far far simpler

Edit: I'm not American, I use sensible units, SI Metric

Edit edit: I do fully have dyscalcus, mostly only effects "scary" looking maths, so no, your suggestion doesn't help

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[-] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago
[-] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

5 to 8 is the far simpler pretty exact conversion.

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this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
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