The study, which analyzed 509 million tweets from 2.4 million users in 84 countries, found that moods fluctuate in a predictable pattern.

Tennis lessons, in my experience, tend to follow a depressingly predictable pattern.

The conflict cycle becomes a predictable pattern of negative events and, eventually, couples come to expect them to happen.

By studying the lives of several of these people, a common and predictable pattern emerges.

Imagined futures will not, therefore, descend vertically like a genealogy, connected organically and travelling through time in a predictable pattern.