Generalized Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Ratio
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The sequence of Fibonacci numbers is given by 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, …, in which each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers. As , the ratio approaches , known as the golden ratio (or golden section or divine proportion), designated by .
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Contributed by: S. M. Blinder (July 2018)
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA
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Consider the original Fibonacci sequence: divide the recursion relation by to give
.
With some work, you can prove that the ratios form a Cauchy sequence, so the sequence has a limit; call it . Thus
while
.
This gives or , a quadratic equation with roots
.
The positive root
gives the golden ratio.
For the generalized Fibonacci sequence , the general term can be written using Fibonacci numbers as . Therefore,
.
In the limit , this approaches
,
independent of or , as long as not both are zero.
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