Week 3: Everyday patterns and formulas

Introduction

Patterns occur everywhere in art, nature, science and especially mathematics. Being able to recognise, describe and use these patterns is an important skill to have when tackling a variety of different problems and in understanding the world, for example, predicting the effect on fish numbers for a given amount harvested from the sea. This course explores some of these patterns, ranging from ancient number patterns to the latest mathematical research. It also looks at useful practical applications that are relevant to everyday life. Your study of this subject is spread over two weeks, and includes plenty of activities for you to do to gain confidence with these ideas.

In the following video Maria introduces you to Week 3:

Download this video clip.Video player: swim2_week_3.mp4

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Transcript

Maria Townsend:

I can’t see any clear patterns in this piece of artwork at the Open University but if I look at the brick wall below it’s a very different situation. This is made from rows of rectangles with each row overlapping the next by half a brick. And spotting the pattern means I can describe it concisely to other people.

In maths we’re always looking out for patterns and this week you’ll find out how useful they can be.

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After studying this unit, you should be able to:

• recognise patterns in a variety of different situations
• use word formulas to help solve a problem
• write your own word formulas to help solve a problem.