Math Aunty

So bees…

I hate bees!

But since they’re fairly important to solving this problem of the week… I decided to love them and play around with them a little bit.

Before actually thinking about the problem in terms of mathematical equations, I noticed a few things about the picture. Each hive(?) was surrounded by 4 other hives, but only 2 of them contained a number greater than itself. (Except 1, which is surrounded by 2 hives and 2, which is only surrounded by 3).

As I began to do the paths myself, I got a pattern of 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 for the number of paths to the first six cells. I played around with this “set” of numbers and realized that each element is simply the addition of the previous two elements!

I knew that I had seen a sequence like this before but I couldn’t put a finger on it so I asked a resident bio major and got that this was a Fibonacci sequence!

What might this have to do with rabbits? It turns out that the reproduction of rabbits follows this sequence!

Peace, Love, and Mathiness!