[Ntrails]

Rote symbolic manipulation is not inherent to solving the mathematics described in the paper. That's part of the point.

I'd argue that the endless swarms of people playing bejeweled variants suggests pattern analysis is extremely popular.

Mathematics is currently taught with the excuse "you'll need this later, it's useful - honest". If you're advocating an additional helping of that, why is THIS future possible application relevant in a way that the others aren't?