Attempting to learn mathematics as some sort of pattern matching... does not work China (and other countries who put American math education to shame) disagree

Attempting to learn mathematics as some sort of pattern matching... does not work China (and other countries who put American math education to shame) disagrees. For you, math may have been a deduction from first principles, but to us mere mortals, math is a decade-long slow reveal through wax-on-wax-off repetition.