Patterns across subjects

All seventeen

Each drawing shows the rule in its simplest form. Synchrony is the one you can try so far; the others are written up here first and get their own page as they are built.

• Synchrony

  Many rhythms nudge each other until they keep one time, with no conductor.

  You have met it in fireflies flashing together, applause that falls into one beat, heart cells, the power grid.

  Try it here

• Chaos

  Tiny differences at the start grow until prediction fails, with no randomness anywhere.

  You have met it in the weather more than a week or two ahead, a double pendulum, a pinball’s path.

  See it run: The Lorenz attractor in the simulations

• Spots and stripes

  Two things reacting and spreading at different speeds draw a pattern nobody designed.

  You have met it in a leopard’s spots, a zebra’s stripes, bands of plants in dry land.

  See it run: Turing patterns in the simulations

• Sudden change at a threshold

  Little changes until a threshold, then a great deal changes at once.

  You have met it in water turning to ice, a magnet losing its pull when heated, a rumour that suddenly spreads.

  See it run: The critical point of a magnet in the simulations

• Waves meeting

  Where waves overlap they add up or cancel out.

  You have met it in noise-cancelling headphones, the colours on a soap bubble, two notes slightly out of tune.

  See it run: The double slit in the simulations

• The same shape at every size

  Zoom in and the part looks like the whole.

  You have met it in a fern, a coastline, a river delta, the branches of your lungs.

  See it run: The Mandelbrot set in the simulations

• Moving together

  Each one follows a few neighbours, and the crowd turns as one.

  You have met it in a flock of starlings, a school of fish, traffic that jams for no reason.

  Not built yet

• Selection

  Copies with small changes, and a world that keeps some more than others.

  You have met it in germs that resist antibiotics, dog breeds, which songs and words survive.

  Not built yet

• Big worlds from small rules

  A handful of local rules, repeated, builds something no rule describes.

  You have met it in snowflakes, termite mounds, the Game of Life.

  Not built yet

• Rich get richer

  Whatever is already ahead attracts the next arrival.

  You have met it in popular websites gaining more links, big cities growing faster, paths worn across grass.

  Not built yet

• Exponential growth

  Growth in proportion to size, which looks slow for a long time and then very fast.

  You have met it in compound interest, a spreading virus, a pond filling with algae.

  Not built yet

• Tipping points

  Push past a point and it flips, and pushing back does not flip it back.

  You have met it in a lake turning murky, an ice sheet melting, a social norm that suddenly changes.

  Not built yet

• Scaling laws

  Double the size and something else changes by a fixed ratio, usually not two.

  You have met it in a mouse’s heart beating faster than an elephant’s, bigger cities producing more per person.

  Not built yet

• Who’s missing from the sample

  The cases you can see were filtered by a process you cannot see.

  You have met it in reviews written only by happy customers, studying only the bombers that came back.

  Not built yet

• Seeing patterns in noise

  Random things clump, and people read the clumps as messages.

  You have met it in lucky streaks, faces in clouds, disease clusters that turn out to be chance.

  Not built yet

• Discounting the future

  A reward later counts for less than the same reward now.

  You have met it in putting off a chore, saving for retirement, paying now for a cooler climate later.

  Not built yet

• Sharing a commons

  What everyone can use, nobody has a reason to look after, unless the group decides how.

  You have met it in overfished seas, a shared kitchen, open-source software, a village pasture.

  Not built yet