Fibonacci

Leonardo Fibonacci was a great mathmetician, who lived in [|Pisa, Italy]. He was born in Pisa, as the son of an Italian customs officer, William Fibonacci, whose job was to keep track of who and what are allowed in and out of a country's borders, and, since Pisa was near the Mediterranean Sea, William had a busy, busy job. As a child, Leonardo attended public school and had to learn grammar, speaking, logic, geometry, astronomy, music, and arithmetic (math), or the "seven liberal arts". Even though he spoke Italian, Leo had to learn these in Latin. If he'd had only this teaching, he wouldn't have made the great wave in mathematics that he did.

As an adult, Fibonacci suggested that Italians start using our present set of numbers (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) in place of [|Roman numerals] such as M's, C's, L's, X's, V's, and I's. He did this because he said that they would then be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide on paper, which was impossible with their Roman numeral system. Then, the only calculating system they had was the [|abacus], a set of wires with beads on them. However, they were unable to check their work, because the equations disappear as soon as they were solved.

Fibonacci also came up with a set of numbers with a pattern in it, aptly named the Fibonacci numbers. The Fibonacci numbers are what ties into our novel study of __The Wright 3__. The pattern is made by taking the number before it and adding it to the number you are on. These are the first ten Fibonacci numbers:1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55. In case you don't get it, here's an explanation; 1+0=1//1+1=2//2+1=3//3+2=5//5+3=8//8+5=13//13+8=21//21+13=34//34+21=55 and so on.