Same Math, Different Skins

Once your eye is trained, the repeats jump out. The hexagons in a honeycomb and the walls between soap bubbles settle into the same shape, because both are nature's cheapest way to tile a space. Money in a savings account and bacteria in a dish climb the same curve. The skins differ; the math underneath is one.

Here is a clean rule to carry around. A queue at a coffee shop and a buffer in a streaming video both obey Little's Law: the average number of items waiting equals the arrival rate times the average time each one spends inside. Same formula, coffee or video.