V13:2: PR: Visual Pattern Designer - By John Sweeney

Visual Pattern Designer Professional - By John Sweeney

Visual Pattern Designer has defined pattern recognition.

Nearly everyone who's looked at a chart has, at one time or another, been intrigued with the idea of patterns in prices. Something in price charting attracts the eye and seductively presents patterns we feel are somehow recognizable. The difficulty, though, in programming these patterns into the cold objectivity of a computer should suggest to us that either the issue is more subtle than we think or our impressions are false.

Now, in a fresh look at the issue, Digital Enterprises has defined pattern recognition in two ways: summarized distance between selected points (high, low, close, whatever), which is the vector quantization method, or the relationships between selected points (higher highs, higher lows, for example), which is the order method. The latter is the traditional approach of chartists. Digital Enterprises offers Visual Pattern Designer, which is the basic version of the software, and Visual Pattern Designer Professional, which is geared toward more complex analysis.

In Visual Pattern Designer, you define a sequence with as many bars as you can fit on a screen by marking the beginning and ending points, then select the method of comparison to be used (Figures 1 and 2). A fair facility for specifying relationships between price points is provided and particularly in the order mode, wherein you may state exactly which points are to be considered and how much difference, if any, should be between them (Figure 3).