Talk:Fibonacci sequence

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Origins

The photo in the icon (with the page from Liber Abaci) is broken. However, when is clicked, the original photo is right. Can someone restore the photo in the icon? (I don't know how to do this). Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 223.27.210.130 (talk) 03:39, 24 November 2012 (UTC)

Article name

It seems to me the current name "Fibonacci number" is not the best option. Wouldn't "Fibonacci numbers" (note the s), "Fibonacci series" or specially "Fibonacci sequence" be a better alternative? --Götz (talk) 04:43, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

What's wrong with the current title? "Not the best option" is too vague to be helpful. I suspect that "number" better fits WP:COMMONNAME than "series" or "sequence" (which you also haven't provided any specific reason for preferring). "Numbers" does not match WP:SINGULAR. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:49, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I was not aware of WP:SINGULAR, although I find it odd that when describing a series/sequence, the page title is in singular, and the rest of the article is in plural. But there is also WP:PLURAL, under the Exceptions section, "Similarly, one is much more likely to mention the Bernoulli numbers than a particular Bernoulli number."

Then, following WP:Search engine test and considering WP:SINGULAR, it seems that "sequence" fits better with WP:COMMONNAME, as it can be seen in Google Ngram and Google Trends. But, what should we do regarding WP:SINGULAR and WP:PLURAL? --Götz (talk) 17:42, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree that Fibonacci sequence is a better name. Google Trends (Thanks Götz!) supports the idea that "fibonacci sequence" is most common. And when recently doing research on the Fibonacci sequence (how I got here), I always searched for the more familiar "fibonacci sequence." Are there any good reasons or precedents for leaving the title as Fibonacci number? Tedsanders (talk) 03:07, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Most Wikipedia articles about an individual sequence of integers are named "X number" rather than "X sequence". An article named "X sequence" is usually about a family of integer sequences with similar characteristics (examples are Hofstadter sequence, fractal sequence, complete sequence). But there are exceptions to this "rule" - for example, Padovan sequence, Golomb sequence and Euclid–Mullin sequence are all articles about individual sequences. Renaming this article to Fibonacci sequence (which is currenctly a redirect) has been occassionally suggested in the past - see this talk page archive - but never actioned AFAIK. Gandalf61 (talk) 09:54, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Divisibility properties Error

It look like there is an Error Displayed under the Section "Divisibility properties" which is under "Primes and divisibility"

Check it out here: Fibonacci_number#Divisibility_properties

I don't know to code "math" so if anyone how knows whats going on in that section please fix it immediately!

If there is no Error displayed it might have been fixed or removed.

Thanks in advance,

Gideon^{Wanna talk?} 04:51, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Can you state exactly what is the error? The only one that I have found is the "it follows" of the second paragraph: the result does not follows immediately from the previous one, but is an easy consequence of the basic recurrence relation. I have corrected this. On the other hand, if the error lies in the math display, it is possible that it is not an error in the article, but in the data transmission; it seems that Internet did not work correctly yesterday. D.Lazard (talk) 07:53, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

hey D.Lazard I', sorry I think its the internet problem (My Fault!) Really sorry, I should have reloaded the webpage!! Sorry, Thanks though... Gideon^{Wanna talk?} 10:17, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

"Vandalization" of MacTutor history of Mathematics reference

User:Wcherowi removed my so-called "tongue in cheek" reference to a publication from the MacTutor history of Mathematics archive, claiming that it is not published. This is absurd. The url was given to the publication itself. MacTutor publishes refereed articles ONLINE! MacTutor is a reputable archive of mathematical history. I want to put this material back. It is instructive.TonyMath (talk) 01:40, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

FYI, I would also like to point out that this published refereed paper is linked to the very biography of Fibonacci himself at the MacTutor historical archive in St-Andrews University. It's at the top of the list of "Additional material". I Also note that Ron Knott's material on the Fibonacci numbers is also online and cited in this very article. So what is this egregious comment "tongue-in-cheek" all about?

This preprint was submitted to MacTutor in March 2014. I hardly think it has been refereed in this short period. While I generally respect the MacTutor material, it can be of uneven quality. At best this could be considered an opinion piece (advancing a hypothesis) and would not be published in a legitimate scholastic journal. Its appearance on-line does not make it a reliable source. Even if I am wrong about it being a hoax, it is clearly a case of WP:TOOSOON. Bill Cherowitzo (talk) 04:51, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I happen to know that the article had been seen long before the March date and was refereed by the editors themselves. Edmund F. Robertson had seen this article as far back as September 2013 i.e. several months before in fact. What is this stuff about MacTutor not being a legitimate scholastic journal? The editors of MacTutor material would not have linked the biography of Fibonacci to this paper had they not considered it acceptable.TonyMath (talk) 08:54, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

BTW, Reference to MacTutor appears in the Wikipedia site for Al-Karaji namely Note no. 3 and References_and_external_links. MacTutor is also cited in the general references of the Wikipedia site on the great Mathematicians Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī and Abū Kāmil Shujāʿ ibn Aslam. MacTutor is intensely involved in studying Mathematics of the middle-ages. So explain something to me: if MacTutor is an acceptable reference in these sites, then why not here?TonyMath (talk) 09:02, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

I checked the Wikipedia site MacTutor History of Mathematics archive and if you use the tools on the left and find what cites to that archive: you find a HUGE number of Wikipedia articles that cite MacTutor! It is so big, they have to be categorized in alphabetical order. I am all the more amazed at the claim that MacTutor is not a sufficiently credible citation for Wikipedia herein.TonyMath (talk) 10:03, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

You have to be careful with MacTutor. Their biographies are reliable but some of their other stuff is just student essays that should not be considered reliable. In particular, I do not believe that the source in question, [1], should be considered reliable. It is not one of the biographies, is labeled as a preprint, does not seem to have been reliably published, and contains what looks to me like decidedly fringey speculation. —David Eppstein (talk) 12:46, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

What I have to be careful about is this kind of bias but you and your colleagues will have your way, rest assured. Yes, the article was submitted as a preprint (of course, for the review process) but MacTutor would not have put it online and linked it to their very biography of Fibonacci even it had not been accepted for publication. I cannot buy these claims about MacTutor or some of MacTutor not being "reliable" subject to your evaluation. MacTutor is mentioned in the very Wikipedia site for Pythagoras. FYI, Do you know how many people out there insist that Wikipedia itself is not authoritative? But we can all get through this with discernment and objectivity. I can understand that something of an obscure speculative history from a recent publication might be premature for this site which focusses on the Mathematics of the Fibonacci sequence. I get that and I will no longer insist on mentioning this recent MacTutor content on this particular Wikipedia site but you and your colleagues can do yourself a favor by avoiding this ad-hominem bashing of the reliability of MacTutor's content (against Wikipedia's guidelines I might add). It is an affront to its editors and its authors especially since Wikipedia does cite MacTutor in so many cases. Moreover, I don't really believe that the true objection is really the Publisher of the material but rather its content and its implications. Some of the editors simply don't appreciate the content and its controversial implications e.g. how much Fibonacci virtually plagiarized Muslim scholarship. It would have been more honest to simply admit that. At any rate, I will no longer pursue the matter.TonyMath (talk) 03:36, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Why are the sequence examples images?

The two examples at the top of the page are images, rather than simply text. Why is this preferable? Images with text are generally considered bad from a usability standpoint. Unlike Unicode characters with distant code points, these reside in ascii (except for the trailing ellipsis) so there's no compatibility issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Preinheimer (talk • contribs) 15:45, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

You mean the lists of numbers at the top of the article? It's because of Wikimedia's continued poor handling of mathematics markup. They are coded using the <math> tag in the source code of the article, and by default Wikimedia turns that into an image. If you turn on mathjax rendering in your preferences it will be formatted better. As for why they're coded that way: to make them look consistent with the other mathematical formulas in the article. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:15, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Starting points

Can there be some explanation about the starting points 1,1 versus 0,1? Right now I am confused which one to pick, and why the "0,1" is called modern starting point. 84.113.183.242 (talk) 11:48, 29 October 2014 (UTC)