In the journey of making STEM learning intutive, I asked: what is the fundamental unit of learning? What exactly are we taking into our brains?
My answer is: “PATTERNS”.
But what is a pattern?
A pattern is compressed regularity.
It has two parts:
- Regularity
- Compressed
Regularity is the opposite of chaos. It is order in reality. The physical world behaves in consistent ways. We call these consistencies physical laws. Why do they exist? We don’t know. But we observe them.
Compression means reducing many instances into one abstraction. Instead of storing evey falling apple, we store gravity. Because the brain prefers efficiency. It wants to do more with less. Compression is the foundation of intelligence.
So a pattern is compressed regularity in the world.
Why do we learn STEM? We learn it to make reliable predictions in the world. If I act, I want to know what will happen. Prediction requires understanding regularities. So learning means internalizing the regularities.
So everything you learn is a collection of patterns.