Trusting in patterns

Human beings are natural “pattern sniffers” (Cuoco, Goldenberg, & Mark, 1996), and a sensitivity to patterns is nowhere more critical than in the study of mathematics. Indeed, mathematics is sometimes defined as the study of patterns (e.g., Devlin, 1994). But, this attention to patterns has to be more than mindless ‘pattern spotting’ that fails to engage with the deep structure of the mathematics.