7 Levels of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

Sometimes insight and inspiration come from strange places. 

I stumbled upon a video of a Japanese man playing the lullaby "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" on the piano at 7 different levels of intensity. It has almost 5 million views. Check it out. 

 

hat-tip to David Kotok for the video via Cateen かてぃん

On top of being an impressive feat of skill, I couldn't help but relate it back to our tendency towards pattern recognition and heuristics. 

 

Even at level 7, it's not hard to hear the iconic lullaby. Whether you hear the simple version or a complicated version, somehow you know that the base is the same.  The human brain is great at recognizing patterns (sometimes too great, finding patterns that aren't there).

 

As an aside, I have three distinct sets of clothes in my closet.  I think of them as fat boy clothes, skinny boy clothes, and clothes.  If I look at Facebook, it's easy for me to see (simply by looking at my face) when I'm picking clothes from each of those sections in my closet. But how does a facial recognition software know that I'm still me (at weights ranging from 200 to 250 pounds)? Or that I'm still me in a profile picture taken eight years ago.  Somehow you have to recognize the match despite the mismatch.

 

Similarly, how does pattern recognition software recognize a pattern that might happen over a period of minutes versus that same pattern when it occurs over a period of seconds or days?

A simple video - but a great reminder. Hope you enjoyed it.