Re: explain please the phi ratio

From: Randy Poe (poespam-trap_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 09/27/04 

Date: 27 Sep 2004 10:19:56 -0700

Chan-Ho Suh <suh@math.ucdavis.nospam.edu> wrote in message news:<270920040340500200%suh@math.ucdavis.nospam.edu>...

> Hmmm...so remember I said if you use Google, the noise-to-signal ratio
> is high? For something like this, it's really better to go out and
> read a made-from-trees book.

I'll do so next time I get a chance.

>
> Let me make a comment in addition to what others have said.
>
> Yes, Pythagoras was instrumental in promoting the idea that numbers are
> the source to knowledge, e.g. "everything is number" etc. The facts of
> the matter are that we know very little about Pythagoras, and much that
> we know about him is apocryphal. I've yet to see any evidence that the
> ancient Greeks had religious beliefs about the golden ratio in
> particular.

I plead "guilty" to the charge of getting most of the info
from my response by Googling.

However, what I heard about the Greeks and the importance of
ratios, the golden ratio in particular, predates the world
wide web by many years. The source would be history of
mathematics books written for a popular audience. They
could certainly have been passing on persistent myths,
and I won't argue against that. You seem to have access
to much more authoritative sources. It must have been at
least 30 years ago, probably more, that I first read of
the importance of ratios (golden and otherwise)
to the Greeks. I just used the WWW to refresh my childhood
memories. One of my original encounters with this material
may have been via Martin Gardner, but I couldn't swear to
that.

Are you next going to tell me that the Pythagoreans
were not upset by the concept that there could be
irrational numbers? I will be very upset if you tell me
this too is a myth with no basis in fact.

           - Randy