I am glad to be back and taking pictures with The Lady, but sometimes this little monster has no idea what to do to help.
Today I asked what we were going to take pictures of and The Lady said that we had to find fibbing gnocchi numbers. I thought to myself: Are there really that many gnocchi out there telling lies that someone keeps track of the numbers showing how many fibs they tell? I thought people only did that for Mr. Trump. Is he a gnocchi? No he can’t be a gnocchi. Gnocchi are Italian dumplings. He’s not Italian or a dumpling. So, what do gnocchi fib about? Whether they are made from potato or semolina flour? Whether they have breadcrumbs or cornmeal? More importantly, where are we going to find any gnocchi, fibbing or otherwise, today?
I expressed my serious misgivings about today’s project to The Lady.
She said, “Fibonacci numbers, not fibbing gnocchi numbers!”
Well, that certainly cleared things up for me. No really.
The Lady tried to explain.
She said that Fibonacci numbers are a sequence of numbers, such that each number is the sum of the two preceding ones, starting with 0 and 1.
0+1=1, 1+1=2, 2+1=3, 3+2=5, 5+3=8
Hmmm…That’s not too hard, I thought. We just have to take pictures of zeros, ones, twos, threes, fives, and eights. The Lady said it was more complicated than that. She explained that there were lots more Fibonacci numbers than these six. Oh. I couldn’t figure out any more because I only have eight claws to help me count. She then said it isn’t so much about the actual numbers but the ratio between the numbers.
I really didn’t want to hear about all of this stuff. I am just a little furry blue and orange monster with eight claws and who that likes to collect t-shirts, not one who wants to hear about strange Italian numbers. And I don’t want a t-shirt with these fibbing gnocchi numbers on it!
The Lady went on talking about her ratios, and lines, and geometry, and Mr. Pizza who discovered the numbers even though they were named after Fibbing Gnocchi Mr. Fibinacci, and fee-fi-fo-fum. I was completely lost and still had no idea what we were supposed to take a picture of.
The Lady finally realized that I was a very confused little monster and explained that a ratio is a spwecial number that shows a relationship between two things. In the case of these numbers she was looking for, that relationship was easier to see than to understand by just talking about the numbers. She showed the ratio to me on a shell and on a tree and in lots of different kinds of flowers. Now things were more interesting. Mr. Guy showed me how easy it was to see in the petals of a rose. In the middle, the petals were close together and as they moved away from the center, they got further and further apart. She said that if we measured, the ratios between adjacent petals would all be the same. I now sort of understood.
The Lady also said that Mr. Guy’s index finger has Fibinacci numbers. Each of the digits in his finger, all the way down to his wrist, is made up of the fee-fi-fo-fum number. That was kind of interesting. I don’t have fee-fi-fo-fum fingers. Actually I don’t have any fingers; I have claws and they don’t have any digits so they can’t have Fibonacci ratio digits. That’s OK. Because Mr. Guy showed me with the flower and then his finger, I think I now understand, a little, about all of these confusing Italian numbers!
I think I’d rather know about pizza and gnocchi!