In the first part of this reading, Hofstadter talks about picturing certain number sequences and its benefits. In particular, he goes into detail with this using the mountain-chain sequence. Along with picturing these patterns, he also discusses the use of breaking up the sequence into "islands" involving varying amounts of elements which can be visually pictured. The examples he uses for the mountain-chain sequence were plateaus (ex. 2,2), up-runs (ex. 1,2,3), down-runs (ex. 3,2,1), and palindromes (ex. 12321). These strategies, as Hofstadter suggests, make sequences that seem nearly impossible to comprehend, much simpler, and sometimes almost trivial to comprehend.
The picturing strategy in particular, seems like a great way to start out in recognizing patterns. Picturing a complicated sequence that involves series of the previously mentioned "islands" make it practically a trivial task to recognize the pattern. It is much easier for the human eye to recognize a series of "mountains" that involve an up-run, peak, plateau, and down-run of incrementing length and height through a picture than it would be to recognize it through a series of numbers. Naturally, it seems that humans would look for some time of numerical pattern in a sequence involving incrementing/decrementing numbers, or break it up into smaller, but consistent segments like 2 or 3 elements. Recognizing islands and plateaus would only come into place after much time has been wasted failing at trying to find any of the previous patterns in the case of the mountain-chain sequence. However, if the first thing someone did was simply "graph" or make a picture of the sequence, it would only take a short time to recognize the mountains of gradually increasing height and length. Not only is it simpler, but this is a great example of how the human brain works with recognizing patterns visually.
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