Look at the World, It's Filled With Patterns

"There’s something,” Stu Harris said, pointing to the image on the screen. Before that, he and the crew saw endless miles of mud. But on the screen, they saw images of something man-made. Bingo. It was debris from the Titanic. Robert Ballard is a retired Navy officer and University of Rhode Island professor of oceanography noted for his underwater archaeology, he and his crew were jumping up and down like children. But the jubilant mood changed to somber like someone hit a wall switch. They were looking at a gravesite. They left the room, held a private ceremony, then came back, and never left that somber state again.

Robert Ballard said to me that the discovery of the Titanic was no accident. The discovery followed careful search patterns of ocean currents and the ship’s debris field. He was driven since childhood by a passion and curiosity to explore the ocean depths. Some discoveries do happen by accident. Discoveries made by accident are newsworthy events that often capture the headlines. The accidental discovery of penicillin, the microwave oven, Teflon, X-rays, Velcro, rubber, and plastic are often featured by the popular press. Discoveries that are serendipitous, stumbled upon by chance, or discovered while working to discover something else, however, are rare events. Far more common are discoveries inspired by a pattern that piqued the curiosity of someone.

If it happens once, it’s an accident; twice, it may be a coincidence.

But if it happens three times, it’s a pattern—Author unknown

The message here is that everyday people can make discoveries big and small by sending their brains on a mission to find patterns in the world around us. Pay attention to what your brain is trying to tell you. There is a misconception that to discover something new, you must be really smart or really lucky, or in view of the new era of big data, skilled at computing larger amounts of data. Neither is necessarily true. Discovery, in fact, is within reach of anyone who is curious about the world around them.

Here are a few examples. Pattern seeker and homemaker Jean Nidetch recognized that thin people behave differently than overweight people. Thin people, for example, often pause between bites of food and lay their forks down; overweight people grab their forks and hang on for dear life. Nidetch not only solved her own weight problem by changing her behavior but also solved millions of others by founding Weight Watchers International.

A building near the Australian National University causes a passerby to take a second look. Its radical design consists of rows of offset zigzag walls. One day Andrey Miroshnichenko looked at the building and a bell went off in his brain.

Its radical design pattern inspired Miroshnichenko to create a new type of computer chip using light. The zigzag chip structure prevents light from traveling through its center. Instead, light is channeled to the edges of the material, permitting light to bend around corners. This discovery helps overcomes a major hurdle in the goal to develop optical computers capable of processing data at the speed of light.

Fish angler Laurie Rapala discovered that predatory fish repeatedly target preys that have a flaw in their swimming motion. He decided to fashion an artificial lure that mimicked the movement of the injured minnow. It worked to lure and hook record-sized fish. Word spread quickly. The Rapala lure is now the world’s most popular lure, used by anglers worldwide. It is a true rags-to-riches story.

Guy Stewart Callendar took up climate study as an amateur enthusiast. Callendar painstakingly collected and sorted out temperature data recorded from around the world. When he evaluated the numbers, he found something startling. The pattern of numbers told him that global temperatures were rising. Callendar was the first to discover in 1938 that the planet had warmed. His work is still relatively unknown but his contribution to climate science today was groundbreaking.

Just getting the right word pattern for a joke takes time. According to popular comedian Jerry Seinfeld, it can take a long time. In an interview with The New York Times, Seinfeld described how he created a joke featuring his first encounter with pop tarts. “Normally, jokes take a few days to write, but the pop tart joke was rewritten several times over two years,” and Seinfeld claims that achieving the right sentence structure is much like writing lyrics for a song. Instead of matching words to a melody, words need to fit the timing and rhythm pattern of the joke teller.

Housewife Peggy Murray recognized many patterns in the disease she and her family suffered for many years. Interestingly, 39 adults and children living in the very same neighborhoods of Lyme, Connecticut shared the same symptoms as she and her family; pain, redness, and rashes characteristic of rheumatoid arthritis. Her persistence to identify the cause and cure for the disease led to the discovery by Dr. Allen Steere that an insect was the vector for the disease. The disease was coined Lyme disease, a disease now present in every state.

Attention Essential Reads

Why the Limits of Language Are the Limits of the World

Drop It Like a Squat: Exercise Breaks Can Enhance Attention

Learn from a variety of examples what patterns are, how diverse they are, and what we can learn from them. Because we all are gifted with the brain’s innate ability to recognize patterns, most anyone can recognize this skill in themselves and learn to see patterns that may have gone unnoticed with the unaided eye. The message here is to pay attention to what the brain is trying to tell you. Discovery may be right in front of you or through something or some event that you experience every day. Sometimes, a newly developed instrument yields a new way of looking at the world. Like a new instrument, new ways to observe the world may change the way we interpret the world.

Looking at things in new ways can enhance one’s understanding of the world around us. Pattern recognition has played a big role in past discoveries and innovations and it is significant to you, your home, and your workplace.

What distinguishes pattern discoverers from others and how can pattern recognition be nurtured? Because the brain is wired to recognize patterns, everyone has the potential to be pattern smart. People can become self-informed about how they are pattern smart. Are you better at recognizing people or number patterns? Do you see patterns in nature that others overlook? Do you have a gift for making people laugh? It is the hope that you can use the information gathered from the stories of current and past pattern seekers to apply it to your own life or workplace. You may well be rewarded with an idea that could make the workplace more productive, improve the quality of human lives, or create the next new invention or product. It can even make you smarter.