The Golden Ratio Equals 1.61803399.. : Intro

Posted By Predrag on May 12, 2004

Have you ever heard of the Golden ratio? If you were studying mathematics you heard of it as something like this:

Math

Yeah, it is irrational number. Not cool at all, I know. Why on EARTH I mentioned it here?? Please read the following..

The Golden Mean or Phi and the Golden Ratio abound in nature and perhaps humanity has been genetically programmed to recognize the ratio as being pleasing.

Try to create an artwork by following the Golden Ratio rule and then create exactly the same thing, but in different ratio and ask your friends and other people which one they like best. You will be suprised.

Further in time, I will upload here some stuff and comments considering this issue.

More interesting stuff about the Golden Ratio you can find in Photography e-Book: The Golden Ratio.

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About the author

Predrag

Few years ago, his key goal was to create 100% cross-browser pixel-precise pages - now he bothers us with Web 2.0 concept and clean W3C compliant code. One way or another he's a pain.

Comments

12 Responses to “The Golden Ratio Equals 1.61803399.. : Intro”

ameya says:
September 14th, 2006 at 6:50 pm

Sound very interesting, but man can u post some more work on
Golden Ratio.

Predrag says:
September 15th, 2006 at 12:03 am

Well, I will for sure, since you are not the first one asking. Very soon (in a week from now approx.) I’ll publish some real-life work and examples.

Kepler says:
February 9th, 2007 at 1:46 am

Mario Livio has a great book on this. For the layman and the experience mathematician alike

rick james says:
June 8th, 2007 at 7:40 pm

one awesome thing about the golden ratio is that it is transcendental, in other words it cant be calculated. thus it can be used as the seed for newton’s method, and higher order calculus algorithms, in their computer implementations, to make them run infinitely faster.

rick james says:
June 8th, 2007 at 7:42 pm

excuse me about the transcendental thing, i meant irrational, the two are quite similar when speaking of computers…

pramodh says:
June 26th, 2007 at 4:30 pm

definitely sounds interesting but i really dont see why it is any different or more significant than pi or e which are special in a different way. for eg pi is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of any circle.

and e is the ratio of the volume of any sphere to the volume of the largest cube inscribed in it.

what then is the geometrical significance of phi?

Predrag says:
June 26th, 2007 at 11:44 pm

Well, pramodh, from the angle of mathematics , all these proportions are the same in value. However, golden ratio (phi) is the only one proven to work in design.

One particular research proved that people with golden proportions on their faces (some distances, can’t remember which ones), are more appealing to opposite sex.

There is no geometrical significance, it is the ratio created by an array of Fibonacci numbers.

munkyy says:
August 4th, 2007 at 10:51 am

I know that “PHI” by reading the DA VINCI CODE, any other book writing more spercific about this? I feel interested in.

Predrag says:
August 4th, 2007 at 2:43 pm

There are lots of books covering PHI, but you won’t like them much if you are not a mathematician. However, almost every serious design theory book or study has a significant part about golden ratio (phi).