UW News
Jayadev S. Athreya
June 5, 2025
“Ways of Knowing” Episode 5: Abstract Pattern Recognition, or Math

Imagine an art class where you only did paint by numbers, or a music class where you weren’t allowed to play a song until you practiced scales for 20 years. This is often what it’s like to take a math class, where students spend most of their time learning to solve problems that have already…