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Fibonaccis rabbits
Leonardo Pisano, better known as Fibonacci, is probably best known for a problem he posed in Liber Abaci, a compendium of the arithmetic and algebra knowledge he had obtained during his travels in North Africa. Heres a version of the rabbit problem: Suppose you go to an uninhabited island with a pair of newborn rabbits (one male and one female) who mature at the age of one month, have two ospring (one male and one female) each month after that, and live forever. Each pair of rabbits mature in one month and then produce a pair of newborns at the beginning of every following month. How many pairs of rabbits will there be in a year? At the beginning of the rst month, there are just the original, newborn, pair of rabbits. At the beginning of the second month, those rabbits are now mature and will produce a pair of rabbits at the beginning of the next month. The following table then shows the number of pairs of rabbits at the beginning of the rst three months: month 1 2 3 pairs of rabbits 1 1 2 The original rabbits will produce another pair of rabbits at the beginning of the fourth month, but the pair of rabbits that were born at the beginning of the third month have just matured, so they wont produce a pair of rabbits until the beginning of the fth month. 1. (a) How many pairs of newborn rabbits will arrive at the beginning of month 4? (b) How many pairs of rabbits (of all ages) will there be at the beginning of month 4?
Historical information obtained from the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive (URL: http://www-history.mcs.stand.ac.uk/history/), sponsored by the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

2. (a)

How many pairs of newborn rabbits will arrive at the beginning of month 5? (b) How many pairs of rabbits (of all ages) will there be at the beginning of month 5? How many pairs of newborn rabbits will arrive at the beginning of month 6?
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3. (a)

Problems with a Point: August 29, 2002

Fibonaccis rabbits: Problem

(b) 4. (a)

How many pairs of rabbits (of all ages) will there be at the beginning of month 6?

How many pairs of newborn rabbits will arrive at the beginning of month n? Express your answer in terms of the number of pairs of rabbits which were alive in previous months. (b) How many pairs of rabbits (of all ages) will there be at the beginning of month n? Express your answer in terms of the number of pairs of rabbits which were alive in previous months. Fill in the blanks in the table below. month 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 pairs of rabbits 1 1 2 Solve Fibonaccis rabbit problem, as stated on page 1. How many pairs of rabbits will
there be in a year?

5. (a)

(b)

The sequence generated by the rabbit problem (the number of pairs of rabbits alive at the beginning of a given month) is called the Fibonacci sequence. The symbol Fn is used to represent the nth number in the Fibonacci sequence. Using your solution to the previous problems, you know that F1 = F2 = 1, F3 = 2, F4 = 3, and so on. 6. (a) What is F12 ? (b) What is F15 ? 7. 8. Express Fn as a function of the previous terms of the sequence for all n 3. Challenge: Write a calculator or computer program that will compute any term in the Fibonacci sequence.

Fn is sometimes called the nth Fibonacci number.

You could also use a Spreadsheet program to generate as long a list as you want.

Problems with a Point: August 29, 2002

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Fibonaccis rabbits: Hints

Hints
Hint to problems 14. Only the rabbits that have been alive for two months or more will give birth to a new pair of rabbits (since it takes a month to become mature and another month for gestation). How many pairs of those rabbits will there be? These new pairs, along with the pairs alive during the previous month, will give you the number of pairs there are at the beginning of any given month. Be sure your answer to problem 4 matches with the answers from problems 13. Hint to problem 5. It will be necessary to ll in the blanks from left to right. For part (b), you need to determine which entry in the table tells us the number of rabbits that are alive after a year. Hint to problem 6. For part (a), use the table from problem 5. For part (b), start with the table from problem 5 and use it to compute the next 3 numbers in the sequence. Hint to problem 7. How does the nth term of the sequence depend on the previous two terms of the sequence? See problem 4 for a reminder.

Problems with a Point: August 29, 2002

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Fibonaccis rabbits: Answers

Answers
1. (a) 1 (b) 3 2. (a) 2 (b) 5 3. (a) 3 (b) 8 4. (a) The number of pairs of rabbits there were at the beginning of month n 2 (two months before). (b) The sum of the number of pairs of rabbits at the beginning of the two previous months (the number of rabbits at the beginning of month n 2 plus the number of pairs of rabbits at the beginning of month n 1).

5. (a)

month 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 pairs of rabbits 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 (b) There will be 233 pairs of rabbits after the rst year has passed.

6. (a) F12 = 144 (b) F15 = 610 7. 8. If n 3, Fn = Fn1 + Fn2 . The following program is written for the TI-83 calculator: Input "WHICH ENTRY?",N If N 2 Then 1F End 1A 1B 3C While C N A+BF BA FB C+1C End ClrHome Disp "ENTRY NUMBER",N,"EQUALS",F
This program only makes sense if N is a positive integer. You might want to add a warning message for illegal entries.

Problems with a Point: August 29, 2002

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Fibonaccis rabbits: Solutions

Solutions
1. (a) At the beginning of the fourth month, the original pair of rabbits will produce another pair of rabbits, but the other pair will not produce a pair of rabbits until the beginning of the next month. Therefore, 1 new pair of rabbits will be produced. (b) Combining the newborn pair with the two pairs of rabbits that were already there gives us a total of 3 pairs of rabbits at the beginning of the fourth month. Two pairs of these rabbits will each produce a pair of newborns in the next month. Since it takes two months for a pair of rabbits to mature and then have a pair of rabbits themselves (from then on theyll produce a pair of rabbits at the beginning of every month), the number of new pairs born at the beginning of the fth month will be the number of pairs that were alive at the beginning of the third month. That is, there will be 2 newborn pairs of rabbits at the beginning of the fth month. (b) Combining the 2 newborn pairs with the 3 pairs that were already alive the previous month gives a total of 5 pairs of rabbits at the beginning of the fth month. Using the same strategy as the previous problem, the number of pairs of newborns at the beginning of the sixth month is the number pairs that were alive at the beginning of the fourth month, which is 3. (b) There will be 5 pairs of rabbits alive during the fth month and 3 pairs born at the beginning of the sixth month, so there will be a total of 8 pairs of rabbits at the beginning of the sixth month. Again using the strategy developed in part (a) of problems 13, the number of pairs of rabbits born the beginning of month n will be the number of rabbits that were alive at the beginning of month n 2. (b) We need to add the number of newborn pairs to the number of pairs that were alive the previous month. Thats the sum of the number of rabbits alive at the beginning of month n 2 and the number of rabbits alive at the beginning of month n 1. Stated a little more succinctly, at the beginning of any month, starting with the third month, the number of pairs of
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2. (a)

3. (a)

4. (a)

Problems with a Point: August 29, 2002

Fibonaccis rabbits: Solutions

rabbits will be the sum of the number of pairs of rabbits there were in the previous two months. 5. (a) The entries for months 46 are the solutions to part (b) of questions 13. Using the fact that the number of pairs of rabbits at the beginning of any month (after the second month, at least) is the sum of the number of pairs of rabbits present the previous two months, we see that the number of pairs of rabbits at the beginning of the seventh month is 5 + 8 or 13. Similarly there are 8 + 13 (or 21) pairs of rabbits at the beginning of the eighth month, 13 + 21 (or 34) pairs of rabbits at the beginning of the ninth month, 21 + 34 (or 55) pairs of rabbits at the beginning of the tenth month, 55 + 34 (or 89) pairs of rabbits at the beginning of the eleventh month, and 55 + 89 (or 144) pairs of rabbits at the beginning of the twelfth month. The completed table is shown in the answer to this problem. (b) Twelve months after the beginning of the rst month is the beginning of the thirteenth month, so there are 233 pairs of rabbits alive after a year has passed.

6. (a) F12 is the number of pairs of rabbits alive at the beginning of the twelfth month, which the table shows us is 144. (b) We know that F14 is the sum of F12 and F13 , which equals 377. Similarly, F15 is the sum of F13 and F14 , which is 610. 7. 8. As problems 16 show us, as long as n 3, Fn will be the sum of Fn2 and Fn2 . That is, Fn = Fn2 + Fn1 . The program will probably mimic the procedure used to ll in the table for problem 5. There are many ways to do this (see the program in the answer, for example), but the main idea of any program is to incorporate the fact that Fn = Fn2 + Fn1 when n 3.

Problems with a Point: August 29, 2002

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