Five tickets, one printer
On Tuesday the help desk gets five tickets. Each says something different: "slow", "jammed", "no paper", "blank page", "will not print".
A new technician fixes them one by one. An experienced one sees that all five are about the same printer. One fix may solve all of them.
By the end of this lesson
Note
I can find a pattern in support data and use it to make a prediction.
Key words
| Word | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Pattern recognition | Spotting things that repeat or look alike | |
| Trend | A change that keeps going in one direction | tickets rise each week |
| Similarity | A way two things are alike | |
| Common feature | Something that two problems share | |
| Prediction | A careful guess about what will happen next | |
| Assumption | Something you accept as true without proof |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
Starter
Have a go
Starter
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.
Pattern recognition saves time
The purpose of pattern recognition is to use what repeats. If you have seen a problem before, you already know a fix. If many problems share a cause, you fix the cause once.
A week of tickets
| Day | Room | Problem | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 12 | Cannot log in | Laptop A |
| Monday | 12 | Cannot log in | Laptop B |
| Tuesday | 3 | Printer jammed | Printer 1 |
| Tuesday | 12 | Cannot log in | Laptop C |
| Wednesday | 9 | Screen blank | Projector |
| Thursday | 12 | Cannot log in | Laptop D |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
Check
Have a go
Check
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.