Packet 10: Bonus 16
In 2012, citizen scientists collected data from hundreds of sunflowers to test Alan Turing’s hypothesis that their heads follow this sequence. For 10 points each:
[10e] Spirals in plant phyllotaxis often follow what mathematical sequence described by a 13th-century Italian in a problem about breeding rabbits?
ANSWER: Fibonacci sequence [prompt on the golden ratio]
[10h] Many 20th-century artists owned this biologist’s book On Growth and Form, which illustrated patterns like the Fibonacci sequence in nature. This Scottish biologist applied transformations to animals on the Cartesian plane.
ANSWER: D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson
[10m] Investigating Fibonacci numbers in algae, Aristid Lindenmayer developed the “L-system” to model plant fractals almost concurrently with Benoit Mandlebrot’s 1967 paper on the length of this natural feature.
ANSWER: coastline of Great Britain [or shoreline of Great Britain; accept “How Long Is the Coast of Britain? Statistical Self-Similarity and Fractional Dimension”; prompt on coastline or shoreline]
<HA, Other Academic> | NAFTA-Packet-10
| Heard | PPB | E % | M % | H % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 | 19.66 | 100% | 90% | 7% |
Conversion
Summary
| Tournament | Edition | Match | Heard | PPB | E % | M % | H % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 NAFTA at Stanford | 01/17/2026 | ✓ | 4 | 17.50 | 100% | 75% | 0% |
| 2025 NAFTA Online | 02/14/2026 | ✓ | 4 | 20.00 | 100% | 100% | 0% |
| 2026 NAFTA at Vanderbilt | 02/14/2026 | ✓ | 3 | 20.00 | 100% | 100% | 0% |
| 2025 NAFTA at Toronto | 09/13/2025 | ✓ | 1 | 20.00 | 100% | 100% | 0% |
| 2025 NAFTA at Maryland | 09/27/2025 | ✓ | 1 | 20.00 | 100% | 100% | 0% |
| 2025 NAFTA at Harvard | 10/04/2025 | ✓ | 3 | 23.33 | 100% | 100% | 33% |
| 2025 NAFTA at Oxford | 10/11/2025 | ✓ | 3 | 23.33 | 100% | 100% | 33% |
| 2025 NAFTA at Chicago | 11/08/2025 | ✓ | 6 | 18.33 | 100% | 83% | 0% |
| 2025 NAFTA at Columbia | 11/08/2025 | ✓ | 4 | 17.50 | 100% | 75% | 0% |