About 1.6 (short).

I am insane. It is important that at this juncture you understand that while I can rationalize my insanity and understand its existence, I do not believe myself to be insane (or any less sane than you the reader). I am told this is nothing more than a symptom of my insanity, as one can not both be insane and believe that they are. But I digress.

In Aronofsky's 1998 cult classic PI, the protagonist Maximillian Cohen (played by Sean Gullette) suffers from a psychological disorder resulting from a childhood trauma. His disorder manifests itself in two particular ways. First, he has chronic uncontrollable headaches, and second, his obsession with the number 216. Actually he believes he is searching for a two hundred sixteen digit number, but as such a number is beyond actual observation or repetition here, we can substitute the number 216 for it. The movie explore a number of possible explanations for this number, the true name of god, the consciousness of a main frame computer, the controlling intelligence of the stock market, all leading Max to believe that this number is naturally occurring and thus its consistently repetition is itself explained. What's more, rational thought cannot easily dismiss his obsession as the insanity we later realize it is.

But he isn't the first man to be obsessed a number. For years mathematicians have been obsessed with the number pi (3.14159...). A number which represents the ratio between a straight line and the circle that encompasses it. Its infinitely long non-repeating decimal progression defies reason. There must be a pattern there somewhere right? But Pi isn't the only number to exhibit this behavior, it has a sister number labeled e (probably after the economists that desire it so, 2.71828). The mathematical progression of compounding interest over time. Normally because compounding exhibits linear interpolation you have to compute each time step before the next. Often it is done in years, but sometimes quarterly, or even days, and possibly seconds. However these graphs converge asomtotically to a number: e. E there for is the value for compounding continuously.

My own personal obsession revolves around a different number, sometimes called the golden ratio. Often times personified as a spiral or an exceptionally pleasing rectangle, phi is the limit of the ratio of two consecutive terms of a Fibonacci series; best though of in bunnies. Suppose we have two baby bunnies (a guy and a girl) and lets assume they never die (which while impractical, death will only matter so late in the series that it does not bear discussion), and finally assume it takes them a month to grow up. At the end of the first month there is only one pair. At the end of the second month, two. By the third month the new pair from the second month hasn't grown up yet, so only the first pair reproduces, giving us 3. By the fifth month the second pair has grown up enough to reproduce so we have 5. The sixth month brings us 8. The seventh, 13. Then 21, 34, 55, etc. After ten years we're looking at 5358359254990966640871840 rabbits. Which tells you why rabbit populations can be such a bother. For reference 5358359254990966640871840/ its proceding number (3311648143516982017180081) ~= phi. But Fibonacci doesn't happen to just bunnies, it happens to plants, and cells. Its easy to see why this number starts to appear everywhere.

The bigger wings on a butter fly compared to the smaller ones. The bones in your fingers. The facade on most buildings. The seeds in a sun flower. The branches on a tree.

It is very clear I remind you that I don't think I'm insane, that my obsession is based purely on the frequency of the number. I can see it everywhere, in everyone, because it is there. When I'm sitting alone, when I close my eye, in my dreams, on the ceiling and the walls, its wrapping itself around me it is trying to devour me.

cue the techno music

one point six
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taken from: About One Point Six by Jim Tzenes