this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
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[–] Sir_Premiumhengst@lemmy.world 2 points 12 minutes ago

Works because ratio of km to miles is about the golden ratio.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 8 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

Interesting, but if I have to look up a conversion I’ll just look up the actual conversion rather than an approximation.

[–] CompassRed@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 48 minutes ago

The point is you don't have to look it up. Fibonacci is really easy to compute in your head.

[–] Hufschmid@sopuli.xyz 2 points 34 minutes ago

Why have brain when have computer

[–] Huschke@lemmy.world 4 points 1 hour ago

I always used "a little more than half".

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

5 to 8 is the far simpler pretty exact conversion.

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I’m never going to visit the US or UK anyway.

[–] Routhinator@startrek.website 1 points 1 hour ago

US and Israel are the only places that still use Imperial. While older generations in Canada and UK will speak about weight in Imperial, the official unit system is Metric.

[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (2 children)

Ah yes, I always remember the Fibonacci sequence and totally wouldn't find it harder to calculate than just doing the conversion the regular way

/sarcasm

[–] Dumhuvud@programming.dev 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

"Remember"? Do you also remember all the digits of π?

It's defined as F(0) = 0, F(1) = 1 and F(n) = F(n - 1) + F(n - 2). Which makes more sense than imperial units.

[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

Or I could just do 1.6 km ≈ 1 mile whenever I need to convert from the standard that I use, Metric, to Imperial

Far far far simpler

Edit: I'm not American, I use sensible units, SI Metric

Edit edit: I do fully have dyscalcus, mostly only effects "scary" looking maths, so no, your suggestion doesn't help

[–] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I know from running that 5k is 3.1miles so I just go from there

[–] cheesyxpickle@lemmy.ca 1 points 23 minutes ago
[–] Gloomy@mander.xyz 4 points 6 hours ago

But woudn't you only need the 3 = 5 part?

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

isnt it easier to give them simple conversions 1mi=0.6km.

[–] SacralPlexus@lemmy.world 8 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Might want to check your units.

[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

It's rough estimation, a deviation of anything less than 50% is accurate enough for that

Edit: Ooh I thought you were trying to "um actually, it's 1.66", but I just realised they put 0.6 instead of 1.6

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 5 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

or for in your head maths: half + 10%

(though it’s 1km=0.6mi, 1mi=1.6km)

[–] 33550336@lemmy.world 0 points 6 hours ago

my upvote made 420 upvotes, coincidence?

[–] ExperimentalGuy@programming.dev 19 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

This is such a cool example of how some recursive algorithms have a closed form. We all know that there's a simple equation to plug miles into to get kilometers, but we don't talk about how the Fibonacci sequence has a closed form. This is so cool.

[–] angrystego@lemmy.world 6 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Wjat does closed form mean? Asking as a stupid botanist, sorry.

[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Closed form means it can be written out as a specific, finite set of instructions that work the same regardless of what the input to your function is.

For Fibonacci, it is most commonly defined in its recursive form:

f(0) = 0
f(1) = 1
f(x) = f(x-1) + f(x-2) for integer x > 1

But using this form, computing a very large Fibonacci number requires computing all the numbers before it, so it’s not the same finite set of instructions for every number, it takes more computation to generate larger numbers.

However, there is a closed form formula for generating Fibonacci numbers. Using this formula, you can directly compute any large Fibonacci number without having to compute all those intermediate steps. It takes the same amount of work to compute any Fibonacci number.

f(x) = (a^x - b^x)/√5
a = (1+√5)/2
b = (1-√5)/2

(Note that a and b here are constants; I only wrote them separately to avoid a mess of nested parenthesis)

For an example of something that doesn’t have a closed form, we do not know of a closed form for generating prime numbers. There are several known algorithms for generating the nth prime number, but they all depend on computing all the previous prime numbers, making it very difficult to compute very large prime numbers (in fact, how generating large primes is actually done is by making an educated guess and then checking that it’s actually prime). Discovering a closed form formula for prime numbers would have a huge impact on mathematics and cryptography.

[–] gnawmon@ttrpg.network 28 points 23 hours ago (3 children)
[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 6 hours ago

0.54 nmi (nautical miles)

[–] Landless2029@lemmy.world 12 points 19 hours ago

And yet the military uses "clicks"

[–] PhAzE@lemmy.ca 12 points 23 hours ago (7 children)

Just gotta ask any of the 90% of the world who use it to find out. Americans hate this one simple trick!

[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

Fun fact: there's quite a lot of countries that use "mixed metrics", with no real rhyme or reason for what uses old ancient imperial and what uses new shiny metric

UK - Miles for long distances, switch to meters for distances less than a mile, always use km in air and sea. Milk in pints, petrol in liters, water in ml, beer in pints. Human heights in Feet Inches, building heights in Meters. Human weights in a unit even Americans don't use anymore (Stone), animal weights in kg/g.

[–] zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (2 children)

Really? Do people walk around in the UK and say "I weigh 11 stone"? "I lost 3 stone on this diet"?

[–] cheesyxpickle@lemmy.ca 1 points 20 minutes ago

Canadian here, I watch some UK fitness shows, can confirm.

[–] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 1 points 1 hour ago

Yessir, stone and lbs usually.

So 12 stone 8 for example. 14lbs to the stone.

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[–] lauha@lemmy.world 155 points 1 day ago (3 children)

This is because fibonacci numbers approach golden ratio which is approximately 1,618033... and one mile is 1,609344 kilometres exactly.

[–] 0_0j@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago
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[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 92 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (8 children)
[–] atro_city@fedia.io 36 points 1 day ago (11 children)

Nah, that's too difficult for USAians. They can memorize fibonacci numbers much more easily.

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 points 5 hours ago

To be fair, kilometers make a lot more sense to me, as an American. However, everything is written in miles, and everyone speaks in miles. Estimating distance for me is easier in metric, but it isn't really acceptable.

(I play milsims, which is why I'm more used to it. Most Americans have almost zero experience with metric.)

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[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 13 points 1 day ago (6 children)

To go from km to mi I always leaned “multiply by 6 and move the decimal one to the left”. So 6km is ~3.6mi. Or 10km is just about 6mi.

[–] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 1 points 1 hour ago

Honestly divide by 5 and multiply by 8 usually isn't too difficult and just gives you the right answer.

I remember it by 200mph is 320kph.

[–] 0_0j@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

Thank you, will definitely use this now on

[–] pupbiru@aussie.zone 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

or add half and then 10% (because it’s 1.6km to the mile): easier than multiplying decimals or large numbers by 6, and the inverse is 0.6mi=1km so easy to remember both ways (same thing but don’t “add” just start from 0)

[–] Scavenger8294@feddit.org 0 points 9 hours ago

glad I did not learn conversion in school. Nobody uses miles where i live

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