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Science 29 April 1988:
Vol. 240. no. 4852, pp. 611 - 616
DOI: 10.1126/science.240.4852.611
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Articles

The Science of Patterns

LYNN ARTHUR STEEN 1

1 Professor of mathematics at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN 55057 and chairman of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences.

The rapid growth of computing and applications has helped cross-fertilize the mathematical sciences, yielding an unprecedented abundance of new methods, theories, and models. Examples from statistical science, core mathematics, and applied mathematics illustrate these changes, which have both broadened and enriched the relation between mathematics and science. No longer just the study of number and space, mathematical science has become the science of patterns, with theory built on relations among patterns and on applications derived from the fit between pattern and observation.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)