The rule should tell us how to get the thing in the n-th place, if n can be any number.

No matter which thing in the sequence we want, the rule can tell us what it is.

"Is it the rule to tell those things to the music master?"

But such rules of thumb tell only part of the story.

No mathematical rule can tell us which measure of central tendency will be most appropriate for any particular problem.

The rule tells us, or the computer, where to move every point in the plane by computing the new location.

The rules told him he was in the early ninth century.

And somehow those rules told it to respond with threats of violence.

THE old rule in creative writing is tell what you know, mine your past for material.