Someone has said that God created the integers; all the rest is the work of man. After seeing how the Fibonacci numbers play out in nature, I am not so sure about that. A very enjoyable course.
I came into this course thinking that it was going to be something relatively basic - being my first MOOC I wanted to do something which is new but not too difficult so I can see what online courses are like.
The first week is mostly easy but was still interesting with its novel application of recursion to seemingly difficult problems like the staircase one but the second week stands out mostly for both its difficulty and use of other areas of math to prove results in far better ways - Cassini's identity with the Q matrix in particular. The second week's content is manageable and the entire course only requires understanding of mathematical induction and the manipulation of matrices, both of which have supplementary material to complement the course for those who don't know it or have forgotten how to do it. The exercises set are some of the most insightful I've seen - Catalan's identities proof in particular. Solving that one is worthy of commendation. A system of hints or solutions may be useful for the more difficult exercises like that one but it's mostly an exception among the others. The second week is mostly isolated to the others, mostly for the introduction of useful algebraic results which tie Fibonacci numbers together rather than for the end goal which is outlined in week 3 with the construction of the Fibonacci and golden spirals. I personally found week 2 the best but week 3 was the main part of the course. It stays mostly easier than week 2 except the difficulty spike in the first exercise about the Eye of God, I recommend watching the video which comes after it before attempting that exercise.
Overall, this is an enjoyable course with some very surprising results and manages to go deeper into seemingly simple concepts like the Fibonacci numbers than expected. Thanks Professor Chasnov for a great first course which is definitely suitable to beginners with the way it eases students into the concepts introduced and the great explanations. Recursion in particular is explained extremely well.
