Mika Epstein aka (Ipstenu) wrote a great blog post about her experiences with math growing up. I loved this article so much I am going to post it here. I think a lot of the methods she talks about in her blog post are not being taught in schools today. Pattern-recognition is one of the things she feels helped her be comfortable in the math realm.
She has many examples of methods to increase your number pattern recognition. Thank you Mika! I am going to use them in my math lessons with my students.