[pitchups]

This may well be an example of our ability to find patterns based only on "thin slices," or narrow windows, of experience. [0]

Called "thin-slicing", first read about it in "Blink" by Gladwell, which is based entirely on this concept, and has plenty of great examples of this phenomenon (The Wikipedia link below has some of them).

I think the human brain is the ultimate pattern-matching and learning machine, and when trained long enough develops an ability to discern patterns from the faintest and narrowest of signals.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin-slicing