On the normality of the concatenated Fibonacci constant

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether the concatenated Fibonacci constant is normal in base 10, analyzing theoretical conditions and conducting large-scale numerical experiments to understand digit distribution patterns.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the normality of the Fibonacci constant by combining theoretical analysis with extensive numerical experiments on Fibonacci numbers.

Findings

Classical normality conditions do not apply due to Fibonacci's exponential growth.

Numerical experiments show digit distributions are compatible with randomness at tested scales.

Deep digit behavior of large Fibonacci numbers may be the key obstacle to normality.

Abstract

We study the concatenated Fibonacci constant $\mathcal{F} := 0.F_{1}F_{2}F_{3}\cdots = 0.11235813\cdots$, obtained by concatenating the Fibonacci numbers in the fractional part, and ask whether it is normal. We show that several classical sufficient conditions for normality by concatenation do not apply to the Fibonacci sequence because of its exponential growth, while a criterion of Pollack and Vandehey implies that the normality of $\mathcal{F}$ in base $10$ would follow if almost all Fibonacci numbers were $(\varepsilon,k)$-normal in base $10$. The Benford bias of leading digits and the Pisano periodicity of trailing digits are shown to contribute asymptotically negligible fractions of the total digits, isolating the distribution of the deep digits of large Fibonacci numbers as the remaining obstruction. Large-scale numerical experiments on the first $500{,}000$ Fibonacci numbers in bases $10$ and $2$ indicate that global single-digit counts and $k$-block statistics for $k = 2, 3, 4$ are compatible with iid-like fluctuations at the scales tested, and that a positional decomposition concentrates the visible structured deviation at the boundaries between consecutive Fibonacci numbers, while pooled interior blocks remain close to uniform. Our computations suggest that any obstruction to normality lies in the asymptotic behavior of the deep digits of $F_{n}$.