Why Is it Important to Recognize Patterns?
Pattern recognition is one of the hallmarks of being human, yet it is done so often and with so little thought that most people never stop to think about how important it is. People can read, write, recognize voices, chart time, predict the future and infer the past all because of their innate ability to recognize patterns.
Other People Are Reading
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Make Predictions
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Ancient peoples knew the years, months and seasons from recognizing patterns of weather and the moon that recurred each year; for instance, after a set time of cold weather, the weather gets warmer for a few months, then gets cooler and the process begins again. Behavior can also be predicted in this way -- people are liable to act the same or similar way each time they find themselves in a particular situation. Abnormal or deviant behavior is that which does not fit expected cultural patterns.
Save Time and Energy
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Being able to recognize patterns saves time and energy in many aspects of life. Recognizing a pattern on a graph saves you from having to solve an equation every time you want to find a solution to a function. Researchers and scientists look for patterns in small, diverse sample groups to infer results for larger populations -- new products, medicines and scientific theories are all promulgated based on patterns of response from samples.
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Object Recognition
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Humans recognize objects from letters to faces to coffee mugs based on their conforming to certain expected patterns. Letters come in many different fonts, yet people can read an "a" as an "a" based on patterns of its context with other letters and its basic similarity to other letters seen in the past. Similarly, when an object is a cylinder open on one end with a handle attached to the side, people recognize it as a coffee mug no matter its thickness or color.
Speech and Technology
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Pattern recognition makes it possible to recognize who you are talking to over the phone without caller ID. People recognize others' voices by listening for patterns of such characteristics as tone, pitch, accent and vocabulary.
The psychology of pattern recognition is an important and growing field. By understanding how the human brain so quickly and effectively recognizes and uses patterns, scientists hope to develop similar processes for artificial technology that can predict weather and behavior, recognize speakers, read text, recognize faces, aid in research and so much more.
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