 A traditional sequence early in the 20th century would leave topics such as algebra or geometry entirely for high school, and statistics until college, but newer standards introduce the basic principles needed for understanding these topics very early.For example, most American standards now require children to learn to recognize and extend patterns in kindergarten.This very basic form of algebraic reasoning is extended in elementary school to recognize patterns in functions and arithmetic operations, such as the distributive law, a key principle for doing high school algebra.