Pattern recognition
Once we have decomposed a complex problem, it helps to examine the small problems for similarities or ‘patterns’. These patterns can help us to solve complex problems more efficiently.
What is pattern recognition?
What are patterns?
Imagine that we want to draw a series of cats.
All cats share common characteristics. Among other things they all have eyes, tails and fur. They also like to eat fish and make meowing sounds.
Because we know that all cats have eyes, tails and fur, we can make a good attempt at drawing a cat, simply by including these common characteristics.
In computational thinking, these characteristics are known as patterns. Once we know how to describe one cat we can describe others, simply by following this pattern. The only things that are different are the specifics:
- one cat may have green eyes, a long tail and black fur
- another cat may have yellow eyes, a short tail and striped fur
