Phyllotaxis
the spirals are counted, not admired
Generator

six-and-the-second-moment

Six arrangements of 900 points, from a whorled lattice to a set with no rule in it. The mean number of sides per cell is 5.97–6.04 on all six, because Euler's formula forces it. The mean squared departure from six runs from 0.023 to 1.83 — a factor of 79 — and the most hexagonal tissue in the set is the whorled one, at a rational angle.
The statistic everybody reports is the one that cannot varySix arrangements of 900 points, from a whorled lattice to a set with no rule in it. The mean number of sides per cell is 5.97–6.04 on all six, because Euler's formula forces it. The mean squared departure from six runs from 0.023 to 1.83 — a factor of 79 — and the most hexagonal tissue in the set is the whorled one, at a rational angle.mean sides per cell(forced to six)mean squared departure from six(not forced)whorled, 144°5.9860.023golden, 137.508°5.9900.253rational, 137.5°5.9900.255Lucas, 99.502°6.0360.255137.0°5.9900.291Poisson5.9691.830six433–637 interior cells each, inside 86% of the radiussame cells, same cut, two statistics

Drawn at its defaults, in what a mean side count throws away. It takes no options at all, so every essay calling it gets this exact drawing.

Called by 2 essays

the blast radius of changing it

Packing and tiling

The second moment is the measurement

The mean number of sides in a cellular tissue is six, and Euler's formula leaves it no choice — so it takes the same value on a golden-angle head, a whorled head and a set of random points. The mean squared departure from six varies by a factor of eighty across the same three, and almost nobody reports it.

 The claims, measured

What a summary throws away

Four statistics this collection has relied on turn out to be incapable of varying with the thing they describe — one is invariant to shuffling, one is fixed by a theorem, one is a parameter that stopped mattering, one is a fitted number selected into being wrong. In each case the second statistic was free and nobody had taken it.

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