How fast can you answer this scholarship test question (intelligence?) (1 Viewer)

[Beyblader]

Hi guys

How fast can you answer the question below?
it’s from a year 7 scholarship test for 11 year olds with a 40 second time allocation.
It took me 20 minutes. I’ve showed it to multiple people I know and theres wide range of responses with a lawyer and a 10 y old girl getting it within 40s, a doctor in 3 minutes and a physicist in 8 mins

Do you think it’s good guide to how intelligent someone is?

how long did it take you (and can you give some background on your academic scores for context?)

 

[Qeru]

Hi guys

How fast can you answer the question below?
it’s from a year 7 scholarship test for 11 year olds with a 40 second time allocation.
It took me 20 minutes. I’ve showed it to multiple people I know and theres wide range of responses with a lawyer and a 10 y old girl getting it within 40s, a doctor in 3 minutes and a physicist in 8 mins

Do you think it’s good guide to how intelligent someone is?

how long did it take you (and can you give some background on your academic scores for context?)

View attachment 30234

Is the answer D? (took me about 1 minute). Also no these tests mean next to nothing in intelligence and is really just a brain-teaser.

 

[idkkdi]

Is the answer D? (took me about 1 minute). Also no these tests mean next to nothing in intelligence and is really just a brain-teaser.

i get D as well, less than a minute

 

[idkkdi]

Hi guys

How fast can you answer the question below?
it’s from a year 7 scholarship test for 11 year olds with a 40 second time allocation.
It took me 20 minutes. I’ve showed it to multiple people I know and theres wide range of responses with a lawyer and a 10 y old girl getting it within 40s, a doctor in 3 minutes and a physicist in 8 mins

Do you think it’s good guide to how intelligent someone is?

how long did it take you (and can you give some background on your academic scores for context?)

View attachment 30234

this isnt a very good guide to intelligence.
question is quite sketchy, and I wonder if there's some difficult way that produces similar results as only two things in a series is given.

what does represent a decent guide to intelligence, however, is obtaining results from 100s of patterns (with no prior practice) and comparing this to others.

 

[Anonymously Hidden]

I got D in around 2 minutes after checking my answer twice. Although I couldn't find the exact solution, the most logical answer was D.

 

[Ollier888]

What about C? The numbers in each horizontal line are doubling themselves each time they go across. 9 to 12 = 3 and then 12 to 18 = 6, same with all other lines and the middle number of does that. Can someone DM me why it is D?

 

[idkkdi]

What about C? The numbers in each horizontal line are doubling themselves each time they go across. 9 to 12 = 3 and then 12 to 18 = 6, same with all other lines and the middle number of does that. Can someone DM me why it is D?

by that logic, you would arrive at 32 + 28 = 60.

 

[idkkdi]

What about C? The numbers in each horizontal line are doubling themselves each time they go across. 9 to 12 = 3 and then 12 to 18 = 6, same with all other lines and the middle number of does that. Can someone DM me why it is D?

only logical pattern i can see with the multiple answer choices is for
3 -> 18 is 3*3*2
4 -> 32 is 4*4*2
6 -> therefore 6*6*2.

there may be other patterns that exist though which reach one of the multiple choice answers.

 

[Ollier888]

by that logic, you would arrive at 32 + 28 = 60.

Yikes im still tired lmfao

 

[Beyblader]

I'm amazed when i see people doing this within a minute as theres so many options to work through

For those that answered it quickly can you explain your mental workflow that allowed you to get the answer so quickly?


There seem to be at least 3 ways to answer this: assuming;
x=top box
y=middle box
z=bottom box

METHOD 1: (z-y)y
METHOD 2: ((z-x)y) + y
METHOD 3: 2(y squared)

I think method 2 is the ‘best’ solution as it utilises all all the data provided.

Method 3 is the simplest though

All 3 methods produce the correct value in the other diamonds, as well as for notional missing diamond where x= 8, y = 5, z = 15 and the answer would be 50 with all 3

We know this is correct because it is an arithmetic sequence where x and y values increase by 1 each time, whilst the z value increases by 3 each time

 

[Beyblader]

personally i think this must be at least some guide to intelligience i.e if you can answer it very quickly you must be very intelligent as your brain can process at that speed

if you can't do it quickly it doesnt mean you aren't intelligent though although it probably means you are not genius level

 

[idkkdi]

I'm amazed when i see people doing this within a minute as theres so many options to work through

For those that answered it quickly can you explain your mental workflow that allowed you to get the answer so quickly?


There seem to be at least 3 ways to answer this: assuming;
x=top box
y=middle box
z=bottom box

METHOD 1: (z-y)y
METHOD 2: ((z-x)y) + y
METHOD 3: 2(y squared)

I think method 2 is the ‘best’ solution as it utilises all all the data provided.

Method 3 is the simplest though

All 3 methods produce the correct value in the other diamonds, as well as for notional missing diamond where x= 8, y = 5, z = 15 and the answer would be 50 with all 3

We know this is correct because it is an arithmetic sequence where x and y values increase by 1 each time, whilst the z value increases by 3 each time

mental workflow ---> see patterns, guess and check

maths probably helps with this lol.

 

[Anonymously Hidden]

I think people overestimate the difficulty of a question like this and complicate the solution. Try and just look for patterns without having doubts about what you may be thinking.

 

[Eagle Mum]

I suspect those who do number puzzles get some intuitive ideas from experience the way people who do cryptic crosswords get used to some of the ideas of how clues are created.

For this specific puzzle,
3 is a factor of 18 and 4 is a factor of 32.
So this potentially reduces the puzzle to finding the relationship of 6 & 9 with 6 and 7 & 12 with 8.
Since the last numbers were within the range of the paired numbers, it suggested some form of reduction & averaging
Specifically, adding the first two numbers and subtracting 3 was twice the value of the third number in each case.

It took me two minutes but I’m well past my prime for cognitive processing speed.

 

[idkkdi]

I suspect those who do number puzzles get some intuitive ideas from experience the way people who do cryptic crosswords get used to some of the ideas of how clues are created.

For this specific puzzle,
3 is a factor of 18 and 4 is a factor of 32.
So this potentially reduces the puzzle to finding the relationship of 6 & 9 with 6 and 7 & 12 with 8.
Since the last numbers were within the range of the paired numbers, it suggested some form of reduction & averaging
Specifically, adding the first two numbers and subtracting 3 was twice the value of the third number in each case.

It took me two minutes but I’m well past my prime for cognitive processing speed.

"Specifically, adding the first two numbers and subtracting 3 was twice the value of the third number in each case."

?

 

[idekkedi]

"Specifically, adding the first two numbers and subtracting 3 was twice the value of the third number in each case."

?

?

 

[Eagle Mum]

"Specifically, adding the first two numbers and subtracting 3 was twice the value of the third number in each case."

?

The sum of the top & bottom numbers minus 3 is equal to the solution divided by the number in the middle box.
Beyblader had asked for the explanations of our mental processes and for this problem (& quite often for others), it’s useful to partially ‘reverse engineer’ from solutions with large numbers. So, as I posted above, it seemed worth noting that the solutions in both examples was divisible by the middle number and two of the four multiple choice answers were also divisible by the middle number, so my strategy was to try reducing the problem to a simpler problem - that of finding a relationship between the top & bottom numbers and the quotient of the solution divided by the middle number. The strategy could have failed of course, but the approach of reducing problems enables problem solving without pen & paper.

 

[Eagle Mum]

I'm amazed when i see people doing this within a minute as theres so many options to work through

For those that answered it quickly can you explain your mental workflow that allowed you to get the answer so quickly?


There seem to be at least 3 ways to answer this: assuming;
x=top box
y=middle box
z=bottom box

METHOD 1: (z-y)y
METHOD 2: ((z-x)y) + y
METHOD 3: 2(y squared)

I think method 2 is the ‘best’ solution as it utilises all all the data provided.

Method 3 is the simplest though

All 3 methods produce the correct value in the other diamonds, as well as for notional missing diamond where x= 8, y = 5, z = 15 and the answer would be 50 with all 3

We know this is correct because it is an arithmetic sequence where x and y values increase by 1 each time, whilst the z value increases by 3 each time

There’s a typo in your method 2: (z-x)y + z

I agree that generally solutions ought to include all components. I would regard any maths problem that included variables deliberately & purely as red herrings to be very poor - it shouldn’t be about guessing what the question designer was randomly thinking.

 

[Eagle Mum]

?

IDKKDI May have thought I was referring to the original numbers so my statement would have been nonsensical, whereas I was referring to a partially reverse engineered set of numbers which were easier to mentally manipulate.

 

[Eagle Mum]

Beyblader, out of curiosity, was the 40 seconds an actual limit for the question on a online test (ie. timer with lock out) or an allocation based on the total time given for the whole test and the total number of questions?