Patterns

Sometimes it helps to think in terms of design patterns.

10 years ago, a friend of mine offered me a book on architectural patterns by Christopher Alexander (A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction) I remember beautifully simple description of architectural patterns in buildings such as: a place by the window (inside a house) or a "high place" to look around town, or avoid X junctions, keep only T junctions in residential areas.

How about statistical patterns?