Teen catches math error in golden ratio at Boston’s Museum of Science

While it is unbelievable that a 15-year-old high school student noticed the Golden Ratio error before anyone else, the museum eventually released a statement saying that the minus signs were not technically wrong.

The teen noticed minus signs in the equation where there should have been plus signs.

Joseph told the museum, and after taking a look, they emailed him to tell him he was right. When Joseph came across the “Mathematica: A World of Numbers…and Beyond” exhibit, he realized something was off with the Golden Ratio.

A few days after Joseph made the correction, the museum’s content developer, Alana Parkes, wrote back, telling Rosenfeld that the exhibit would be fixed as soon as possible.

‘This means that decisions about everything in the exhibition requires both Curatorial and Content Development consent (and most things can’t be changed at all). “A lot of times I ask questions and teachers put me down or don’t answer them, but she would take time out of class to answer any questions”.

Rosenfeld has since been invited by the museum to see the Science Behind Pixar exhibition.

The Museum of Science is thrilled at Handley High School sophomore Joseph Rosenfeld’s enthusiasm about math and our Mathematica exhibit. “That doesn’t happen every day”.

But the confident youngster left a message at the museum’s front desk informing them of the error in the Golden Ratio which is found when a line is divided into two parts so that the longer part divided by the smaller part is also equal to the whole length divided by the longer part. The architecture and furniture design experts had probably neglected to notice the error. He hopes to return to Massachusetts someday to attend MIT.