ASCII art and plotting

Using ASCII line art and a printer for plotting allows the human brain to see patterns in large amounts of data. If I plot 3,000 points using a pen plotter with 6 points to the inch I would end up with 40 feet of plot paper with a fine wiggle line on it. If I used a printer, the paper was cheaper, the plot was cruder, but your brain doesn't get lost in the fine detail but sees an overall pattern. If you look at 100's of plots, the overall pattern will become clear. This may be analogous to looking at a highway versus a string to see the trend in points of data. All of a sudden I just realize that if you looked at enough data maybe your brain spontaneously creates patterns. Occasionally I looked at data after consuming a "few" beers, there was lots of patterns then. OT: OT: Have you ever punched cards after a few beers? I seem to remember finding occasional duplicate lines of code or code of the form: 100 IF(I) 100,100,100 you may recognize FORTRAN II. Mike "more patterns than brains"