Here's one idea.  For every permutation $\pi$ of length $n$, there are $n^2+1$ permutation of length $n+1$ containing $\pi$.  However, once you look at permutations of length $n+2$, this quantity depends on $\pi$.  Ray and West gave a proof that for $\pi$ of length $n$ the number of permutations of length $n+2$ containing $\pi$ is
$$
(n^4+2n^3+n^2+4n+4-2j)/2,
$$
where $0\le j\le k-1$ depends on $\pi$.  Perhaps you could give a description of this statistic in terms of patterns of $\pi$?

References and a bit more discussion can be found in this paper: http://www.math.ufl.edu/~vatter/publications/pp2007-problems/