Dr. Jeffrey Chasnov received his BA from UC Berkeley in 1983, and his PhD from Columbia University in 1990. He had postdoctoral appointments at NASA, Stanford University, and the Université Joseph Fourier before expatriating to Hong Kong in 1993, where he is currently a Professor of Mathematics at
This book consists of the lecture notes, problems and solutions from the author’s Coursera course “Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio.” YouTube links to the course’s videos are provided at the top of each lecture. In these lectures, we learn the origin of the Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio, and derive a formula to compute any Fibonacci number from powers of the golden ratio. We learn how to add a series of Fibonacci numbers and their squares, and unveil the mathematics behind a famous paradox called the Fibonacci bamboozlement. We construct a beautiful golden spiral and an even more beautiful Fibonacci spiral, and we learn why the Fibonacci numbers can appear unexpectedly in nature. At the end of each lecture, students are given interesting problems to solve, and the author’s detailed solutions are provided in the book’s Appendix.