From our yard on June 1st comes this Turk's cap flower, Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii. While most of the Turk's cap flowers along our front walkway had the long stamen column that characterizes members of the hibiscus family, some lacked it, thereby allowing a clear look at what you might well call a pinwheel.

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Today is June 18th, which Americans often write 6/18. Now suppose we take the decimal .618, add 1 to it, and multiply the two numbers: 1.618 x .618 = .999924, which comes very close to the number 1. If we'd started with an extended version of .618, namely .61803398875, had added 1 to it and then multiplied those two numbers, we'd have found that 1.61803398875 x .61803398875 gives a result so close to 1 that any handheld calculator you might use, even a fancy scientific model, would round it to exactly 1. (You can also put 1.61803398875 * .61803398875 into your browser's URL address field, hit Enter, and see what you get. You might not have known that your browser's URL address field doubles as a calculator.)

1.61803398875 is a close approximation to the number that people since the ancient Greeks have called the golden ratio or golden mean. Not only does that number have many interesting intrinsic mathematical properties, it also often manifests in nature, about which you can read more.

© 2024 Steven Schwartzman