Afamous mathematician once said that mathematics is a search for
patterns. Patterns occur in many situations. Students need practice
in examining data to see if a pattern exists. Some problems will actually
state that a pattern exists in a sequence of numbers and ask the student to
find the pattern and/or continue the sequence for an additional few terms.
Other problems may require a table or list to organize the data and see if a
pattern emerges. However, a very powerful problem-solving strategy for
problems that do not directly call for finding a pattern is, in fact, to search
for a pattern and then use it to solve the problem.
In everyday life situations, we are often called on to find a pattern to
solve a problem, but not asked to do so directly. Take, for example, searching
for a particular address in a neighborhood with which you are not
familiar. If you are looking for 523 Main Street, you first determine on
which side are the odd-numbered addresses, and then in which order the
numbers are ascending or descending. This involves finding the pattern
and then continuing it to your goal. Finding a pattern can sometimes be
quite challenging, whereas at other times, it is almost directly presented to
you. The best way for students to learn to discover patterns is to practice
finding patterns in different problem situations.