E9: Patterns & Trends: What is a pattern?

Musical spreadsheets, a string of car thefts, and a chance observation spark a question at the heart of this episode: what exactly is a pattern, and how do we recognise one?

Mark and Howard explore Florence Nightingale’s statistical diagrams to modern AI pattern recognition, exploring how humans find meaning in data and how sometimes, meaning finds us. They discuss the risks of seeing structure where none exists, the value of curiosity, and why luck and lateral thinking still matter in an age of algorithms.