I've shared with all of you a very, very simple Sage worksheet called "GoldenRatios." It suould be sitting there in your directory when you log in to your Sage account.
Here's all you have to do for this.
There are various human-made and natural phenomena that tend to have proportions close to the Golden Ratio. Your project, for tomorrow, is to measure one of these things, and enter the ratios into the appropriate lists that appear in the Sage worksheet.
What we're going to measure for this project are switchplate ratios. Find a standard, single-switch switchplate in your home, like this:
Measure the height (longer dimension) of the switchplate, then measure the width (smaller dimension), divide the former by the latter, and enter the ratio you get into the list SwitchplateRatios in the worksheet. Measure carefully, and as precisely as possible. Enter your ratio to three decimal places. Do as many switchplates as you'd like.
For example, I measured a switchplate, and found it has height 4 and 9/16 inches, and width 2 and 13/16 inches. I divided 4 and 9/16 by 2 and 13/16, and got 1.622 (to three decimal places). I entered that number in to the SwitchplateRatios list.
There are a couple of other numbers in that list, for other switchplates I measured. Note that entries must be separated by commas.
The worksheet has a line, in a separate cell at the bottom, that will let you compute the mean of the data in the list. Feel free to evaluate that cell to see how the data is looking.
Have fun with it! If you know of anything else that tends to happen in the golden proportion, go ahead and make a list for it in this program, and enter some data. Maybe others in the class will want to contribute to that list.