Why Is Leonardo Da Fibonacci Important

Daniel Stein 13 August 2015

Leonardo da Pisa (known as Fibonacci)
Introduction
Imagine life without numbers — how would you know when you get up in the morning, how to call your mother, how the stock market is doing, or even how old you are? We all live our lives by numbers. They’re so fundamental to our understanding of the world that we’ve grown to take them for granted. And yet it wasn’t always so. Until the 13th century, even simple arithmetic was mostly accessible to European scholars. Merchants kept track of quantifiables using Roman numerals, performing calculations either by an elaborate yet widespread fingers procedure or with a clumsy mechanical abacus. But in 1202,

This pattern turned out to have an interest and importance far beyond what its creator imagined. It can be used to model or describe an amazing variety of phenomena, in mathematics and science, art and nature. The mathematical ideas the Fibonacci sequence leads to, such as the golden ratio, spirals and self- similar curves, have long been appreciated for their charm and beauty, but no one can really explain why they are echoed so clearly in the world of art and nature. (Dan Reich,

1220-1221. The Practica geometriae draws heavily on the works of the ancient Greek masters, including Euclid and Archimedes. Fibonacci also draws on the works of Plato of Tivloli (1145) [1, p. 609]. Fibonacci's discussion leads often to quadratic equations, in whose solution he shows adept skill, even taking notice of their multiple solutions. Included in the Practica geometriae are many instructions given for the practical surveyor. Simplified instructions are given for measurement, and easily read tables are given where complex computation would have been necessary to obtain the solution. Archimedes' method of determination of “x” from inscribed and circumscribed polygons is discussed. Indeterminate problems that follow from these lines of thought are also treated. (Christopher O'Neill