Scott Duke Kominers, Columnist

Math Geeks Must Wait 100 Years for a Day Like This

Today’s date corresponds to the golden ratio, pleasing to mind and eye.

June 1, 2018 at 7:39 AM UTC

Scott Duke Kominers is the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate of the Harvard University department of economics.

Think about it.
Photographer: dpenn/iStockphoto/Getty Images

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In certain circles, including some of the ones I travel in, there’s great excitement about today’s date. We won’t see its like again for another century.

What makes today so special? The date -- 1/6/184 -- lines up with the first four digits of the golden ratio, a mathematical constant that’s roughly equal to 1.618 and is commonly denoted by the Greek letter phi, which looks a bit like the letter "p" but with an extra loop on the left-hand side of the vertical axis.