Humans Love Patterns!

‘Humans are pattern-seeking animals and we are adept at finding patterns whether they exist of not’

Knowledge question: To what extent does humans’ ability to analyze patterns play a role in their daily lives?

Humans are highly differentiated from other animals in that humans have unique abilities which involve complex brain processing. One of those abilities is to analyze patterns around us. Even though humans do not usually find themselves recognizing patterns, it is not too much to say that humans seek and make use of patterns almost every time because their daily lives are closely related to repeated patterns.

Various patterns exist in the nature and humans have kept trying to keep track of those patterns in order to improve qualities of their lives.

It had been the same even in ancient time. People today take time-keeping devices such as clocks and timers for granted. Moreover, they don’t even bother to try to keep track of time because time is everywhere and they can know the time just by looking at their watches or phones.

However, it was not the case with the people who lived more than three thousand years ago because of the lack of such devices. Nonetheless, it was still imperative that ancient people track time so as to know when to farm. In order to achieve this ultimate goal, they had started to observe repeating patterns of the nature, particularly the sun and the sky, and use deductive reasoning.

Firstly, they studied the movement of the sun across the sky and they came to realize that the sun moved past each point of the sky regularly forming a particular pattern. As a result of a number of trials, they could invent

various kinds of time-keeping devices. For example, ancient Egyptian built a big stone structure called obelisk (around 3500 BC). Obelisks told time by casting a shadow as the sun moved along the sky. Known as one of the most historic architecture, obelisks set the stage for the development of time-keeping devices of later generations. Without any developed technology such as satellites, they could have been able to keep track of time thanks to their success in analyzing the patterns of the nature.

Not only are patterns used in science, but they also have a large impact on math. When it comes to mathematics, it is critical to find out the hidden patterns since math is all about finding and defining rules of repeating patterns.

This can be simply explained by the four fundamental arithmetic operations, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. For instance, in arithmetic sequence, addition is used to find the pattern in which each term increases by common difference.

Patterns found in math are used in many aspects of people’s lives because they appear to be stable when applied in construction. The most common use of patterns in that field is tessellations. Tessellations are patterns that repeat over and over without overlapping or leaving any gaps. It is quite certain that most of floor tiles are not circular but squared. This is because square tiles never overlap each other as they form 360 degrees when each corner of them meets. On the other hand, some other geometric shapes like pentagons can never fill the floor. Therefore, with the use of squared tiles, people can fill the floor with a small number of tiles meaning that it is both cost-effective and aesthetic.

To encapsulate, human beings’ tendency to seek and analyze patterns have made our lives much more convenient. Also, we should always keep in mind that patterns are what make the world more organized and beautiful.