Pattern

A pattern is a form, template, or model (or, more abstractly, a set of rules) which can be used to make or to generate things or parts of a thing, especially if the things that are generated have enough in common for the underlying pattern to be inferred or discerned, in which case the things are said to exhibit the pattern. Pattern matching is the act of checking for the presence of the constituents of a pattern. The detection of underlying patterns is called pattern recognition. The question of how patterns arise naturally is dealt with by the scientific field of pattern formation.

Some patterns (for example, many visual patterns) may be directly observable through the senses.

Some patterns are named. Simple decorative examples are stripes and zigzags. Further examples include the regular tiling of a plane, echoes, and balanced binary branching.