Someone was kind enough to have sent me a really interesting and kind of amazing theory on this photo of my son Quinn - a pic that showed early on how his mind worked a little differently (eventually diagnosed as autism):


Here’s part of her note (actually sent to me as a comment on this site):

My primary research interest is autism and so I had of course seen the pictures you uploaded of Quinn onto the Wikipedia article on autism. I had first seen the “ducks in a row” picture a while ago and felt that there was something interesting going on with the spacing of the ducks in that line of toys. When I drew the pattern out, assigning shapes to the types of toys he had, it blew me away when I realized that Quinn, at two years old, had created a Fibonacci sequence with the ducks (I first learned of this sequence in my senior year of high school). A Fibonacci sequence is 0 1 1 2 3 5 8…continuing infinitely. It’s the pattern that’s found all over nature, in sunflower heads, pinecones, nautilus shells, etc. Furthermore, Quinn lined the toys up in a way that the “non-duck spacers” represent the previous number of ducks multiplied by themselves. So in order: 1 duck (x1) = 2 spacers (clock and teletubby), 1 duck (x1) = 2 spacers (2 shoes), 2 ducks (x2) = 4 spacers (frog, pig, cow, cow). Finally, if he has two of kind for the spacers, he puts them together. Although I have read of talents with prime numbers in autism, I have never come across anything with the Fibonacci sequence. I’m at the beginning of my studies, so I don’t have any concrete recommendations, but a fellow researcher I study with thought this was remarkable as well.

This is something I had never noticed before, but it wouldn’t be impossible to believe. (I will need to look over some of his other sets of lined-up toys and his artwork.)

What do you think?

Update: April 2, 2009

I just found another photo of Quinn doing pretty much the same thing with the ducks on a different day (but around the same age).

Ducks and toys in a row

I wish I could find the original of this so I could see the ducks a little more closely! The 4 ducks should be 5, but maybe (lacking another yellow quacker) he put the green thing as a duck? I certainly don’t know all the ways his lovely mind works, but there’s definitely a pattern here…