Purists will point out that my wave 5 is longer than my wave 3, which it should not be. I'll do what every Elliott student does, I'll renumber. Kevin, I have tried to answer the question you asked, but as a trader I find the smaller wave patterns more useful. If I have to renumber my big picture it rarely changes the direction of the next move, only the magnitude. If Elliott Wave analysis has a persistent flaw it is the compulsion some people feel to forecast too far ahead while focused on the major waves instead of reading each pattern as it emerges.
Human emotion seems to trace clearly identifiable patterns in charts.
The Elliott Wave is imperfect but it seems very useful to me in identifying those patterns in combination with other technical analysis tools I have studied and use. Joe, thanks for your observation on the repeating pattern. However, the larger patterns seem quite different.