

Misconceptions About The Golden Ratio - sown
http://underpaintings.blogspot.com/2010/06/misconceptions-about-golden-ratio.html

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bitslayer
It is true that there is a lot of fluff around the golden ratio, but it does
have some cool properties in five-fold symmetry and the Fibonacci sequence,
and as a result of the latter, in the spiral patterns of plants.

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pigbucket
The paper linked to in this post is math-light and fun (or, if you prefer,
math-light but fun), esp. the discussion of the golden ratio in human anatomy
(ratio of height to height of navel): "we're not told why this is important.
The navel is a scar of no great importance in an adult"; and, having tested
the hypothesis on his family: "there is some ambiguity about the precise
location of the navel since it has a nontrivial length."

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afhof
Highly relevant:
[http://1.618033988749894848204586834365638117720309179805762...](http://1.618033988749894848204586834365638117720309179805762862135448623.com/)

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RiderOfGiraffes
Does anyone else have the urge to go and compute this independently to check
the answer? Of course, if I did that I'd never get around to these:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1383169>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1394751>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1401117>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1404347>

...

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mjcohen
Historical note: In the movie "Pi", the golden ratio appeared in a drawing of
the subdivided rectangle, but they got the ratio wrong! It should have been
(a+b)/a = a/b, but they wrote (a+b)/a = b/a, which is obviously wrong. btw, I
enjoyed the movie. btw^2, the plots and numerical tables in the movie were
from a Dover publication "Tables of Functions, with Formulae and Curves" by
Jahnke and Emde published in 1945.

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celoyd
There are several errors like this in the movie. IMDB’s “goofs” page is long.
I assume they were mostly accidental, but I’d rather see them as part of the
atmosphere of irrationality within rationality.

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Tycho
So, is this guy merely pointing out a few mistakes in an otherwise valid field
(the study of supposed golden ratios in art/design), or is he actually
refuting the entire field and is just too polite to say?

