
The Golden Ratio: Design's Biggest Myth - techaddict009
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3044877/the-golden-ratio-designs-biggest-myth
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scblock
Claiming you can't have a perfect circle because pi is irrational makes no
sense. The physical world isn't built on the decimal system. Similarly, the
golden ratio being an irrational number has no bearing on the article's claims
at all.

~~~
jxcl
Yep. Pretty much any measurement you make in the real world is actually going
to be irrational. We just round them to the closest significant figure we
have.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swm8tTLWirU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swm8tTLWirU)

I'm also interested in subatomic particles like quarks. They're usually
represented as spheres. Are they really spherical?

Similarly, the gravity of a neutron star probably compresses its own mass
pretty damn closely to a perfect sphere. Though I suppose its rotation might
deform it?

~~~
chowells
There's a huge amount of unproven (and possibly unprovable) assumption in that
statement. There's no evidence the universe is actually continuous rather than
discrete at Plank scales. No evidence in either direction, so far as I know.
And given the nature of physics at Plank scales, it might be impossible to
devise an experiment which could distinguish between them.

But if that's the case, it would mean it's not wrong (and not right, either)
to declare that the universe is discrete, meaning all measure are in fact
rational numbers.

~~~
e12e
As we're talking about design, therefore human perception, we just need to
know how the resulting figure is sampled and interpreted by the human eye and
mind. If you can't tell dots close together aren't continous, but discreet -
then for the purpose of this discussion they are not discreet...

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joeyspn
The golden ratio is easy to _demystify_ for journos or non-designers observing
the continuos wave of photoshopped crap trying to _$ fit --force_ the spiral
inside random images/works. But designers of school (industrial,
architectural, engineering etc), know that it has been used for ages. It's
there in the books, even in ancient books, period. And it is _just another
tool_ for achieving pleasant proportion and cadence.

Design has been prostituted lately, specially with the boom in the software
industry, and seems like fitting the spiral in works that weren't built using
the _tool_ properly in the first place are destroying its real
utility/credibility as design pattern. Fact is that fibonacci (as a
mathematical pattern) is useful and can actually be found in several fields
from the stock market [0] to physics [1][2]... so it's not just a "design
thing".

Is it the "holy number" that many people praise in order to sell their
designs? definitely not...

Is it useful as a design tool and could it be an unexplored and practical
numerical constant? definitely yes...

[0]
[http://www.investopedia.com/articles/technical/04/033104.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/technical/04/033104.asp)

[1] [http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/6904/uses-of-
the-...](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/6904/uses-of-the-golden-
ratio-in-physics)

[2]
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7287/full/464362a...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7287/full/464362a.html)

~~~
Crusoe123
Interesting that you give the example of the stock market, since Technical
Analysis (which fibs are a part of) is often criticised for confirmation bias
and lack of scientific proves of it working.

Pretty much parallel to how the golden ratio is criticised in the OP.

~~~
joeyspn
"Fibonacci as a mathematical pattern is useful in several fields" !=
"Fibonacci is a scientifically proven method"

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diminoten
The writing style of this article is antagonistic, childish, and generally
offputting.

The concept is interesting, and I would love to learn more about this topic,
but the person who wrote this article should consider carefully the tone in
which he/she continues to write in the future.

~~~
edc117
I agree with you - this turned me off as well.

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ruricolist
Had the author bothered to read Livio's book, he might appreciate that the
reason it is so easy to see the golden ratio in designs is not DNA, but math:
anytime you divide a measurement into two parts, one larger than the other,
the ratio of the larger part to the whole is _always_ closer to the golden
ratio than the direct ratio of the smaller part to the larger part.

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themartorana
Slightly OT, but do the words "Here's why." make anyone else cringe when
reading a headline? I feel like it's everywhere now, like everywhere, as
though it's the secret key to having your article go viral.

~~~
domdip
It's one of the 'curiosity gap' patterns. Hopefully we'll be immune to this
sort of thing soon.

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anon4
So.. it's just four pictures? Am I missing something? I see some black
rectangles between the pictures, are those supposed to be embedded videos that
aren't loading or ads?

~~~
mattbreeden
Can you scroll down? There's an article below the fold (which I didn't notice
until investigating your comment).

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masswerk
It should be mentioned that in German usage the golden ration (Goldener
Schnitt) refers more to the proportions of the spaces separated by the cutting
line than to the proportions of the surrounding rectangle. Its common
application is basically a finer form of the rule of thirds.

It shouldn't go unmentioned that William Hogarth already proposed a similar
system, based on a serpentine line [0] (and, more important, in its three
dimensional form, on a spiral) in his "The Analysis of Beauty. Written with a
view of fixing the fluctating Ideas of Taste." [1] in 1753. Sidenote: While
Hogarth observes this as an important regulating idea in the work of
Michelangelo, he explicitly complains the lack of any notion thereof in
Leonardo's contemporary "Trattato della Pittura".

[0] Hogarth, The Painter and his Pug (see bottom left)
[http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hogarth-the-painter-
and-...](http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hogarth-the-painter-and-his-
pug-n00112)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analysis_of_Beauty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analysis_of_Beauty)

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explosion
I actually think that the article's example using Dali's The Sacrament of the
Last Supper sort of disproves itself.

Part of why the painting is so elegant is because of its balanced composition:
the arms along the top of the golden spiral, the table edge along the top of
the inner spiral, etc.

~~~
morley
That composition could just as easily (and probably more accurately) be
explained by the rule of thirds than by the golden ratio.

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Grue3
The golden ratio is algebraic, and can be easily constructed with straightedge
and compass. So the first point the author starts with is pure bullshit.
That's like saying sqrt(2) is "impossible" despite it being the diagonal of a
unit square.

~~~
tomtom123
Exactly. Too bad nobody else pointed that out. On the contrary, Pi is
transcendental and therefore cannot be constructed. I hope it is the
journalist and not the Stanford math teacher who got it wrong ;-)

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dsego
Fibonacci Flim-Flam
[https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/pseudo/fibonacc.htm](https://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/pseudo/fibonacc.htm)

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ThomPete
Think about the Golden Ratio more like you think about the binary or decimal
system.

It's not a universal rule but it represents some type of pattern.

~~~
sesqu
It's a useful pattern for anything recursive. I even came across it once when
calculating asymptotics.

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techaddict009
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oyyXC5IzEE&index=8&list=FLH...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oyyXC5IzEE&index=8&list=FLHeakSjmiHCDIHY7O6R9Z_g)
Video on Golden Ratio by Professor Keith Devlin

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dennisbest
The thoughtful and somewhat skeptical comments here on HN are so much better
than the antagonistic and rude comments on the actual post.

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kapsteur
Everybody already knew about golden ratio myst. But leave us to believe in it,
so beautiful, so magical, so majestical.

