Could you pass the 11-plus?

[andrewducker]

Check here - I got 13/15 - I ended up skipping questions 10 and 11 in order to finish inside the ten minute time limit.

Comments

[chuma.livejournal.com]

14/15. Got the last question wrong having guessed and not spotted the sequence within a sequence. Did it within 6 minutes though

[andrewducker]

Ok - my brain is clearly cheese this afternoon. What's the answer to 10/11?

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

10 is 50; 11 is 1.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

10 is "a - (b+1)"
11 is "b - 2a"

[chuma.livejournal.com]

10. Deduct the second number from the first and take away 1 from the result.

11. Double the first number and deduct it from the second.

[andrewducker]

D'oh, I was trying to get from the first number to the third, using the middle one.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Of course, that should work, but is probably harder to visualise. I tried to get to the big number from the two middle-sized ones, which seemed easiest.

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

Me too. Same wrong answer.

I will point out that there are many legitimate ways to extrapolate from a short sequence so it's not at all a fair question, unless the kids have been taught about what kinds of sequence will and will not appear on the test. But if that's the case then it's worthless for comparison over time - it's just teaching to a specific curriculum, which differs between then and now.

(It's mildly amusing, if you happen to be me, that both occurences of 16,17,18,18,19,18 in http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/index.html have 19 as the next term).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I got the last four right, but don't think it was for the right reason. #13 was supposed to be a simple algebraic sequence, but I kept thinking it ought to have something to do with primes.

Are #12 and #15 supposed to be interleaved constant-difference sequences? That was the description I used, and it felt right, but it could easily have been something else with the information given.

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

#13 has nothing to do with primes (31 is missing). They just chose to start on 17 because they are mean and horrid.

There are an awful lot of primes which differ by exactly 2; I think it's still open whether or not the number is infinite...

[draconid.livejournal.com]

Ditto!

[terminalmalaise.livejournal.com]

I did about the same as this. Flew through the first 14 in maybe five minutes, then spent another three on just Q15 before guessing (wrongly) and submitting at the 8 minute mark. Didn't even think to consider that there were separate sequences.

Out of practice

[intemporaliter.livejournal.com]

About the same as that here too. I remember doing this kind of puzzle for fun when I was 11ish though...

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

15/15 in 5:10.

[andrewducker]

Damn you people who work from home in peace/quiet!

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

It's only quiet if I turn the music down :)

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

14/15 - misread q 10 somehow...

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

weirdly, the solutions (as in the method, not just the answer) to 11 and 15 both came to me instantaneously, seemingly without thought (though I did check mechanically too before answering). Maybe background processing whilst doing the ones above.

I wouldn't have said that I was all that good at that type of number problem so I am well pleased.... (Though I suhouldn't be surprised, I recently read Freakonomics, and I spotted the 'cheating' exam results from the raw data instantly as well...)

[rhythmaning.livejournal.com]

Damn - I got 12/15. Not that I'm competitive...

I think I remember that question from 35 years ago...

Funnily enough, I got stuck on 10 and 11 - I ended up guessing wrong!

[themongkey.livejournal.com]

14/15 in 9 minutes, although I knew I'd never get the last question at around the 8 minute mark.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. 14/15 due to getting 6 wrong (I thought I'd not knowing a word, but now I think I just juggled them in my head wrong and didn't see one letter had four plausible words).

But I found the numeric questions really difficult. I expect it's much, much, easier if you know in advance the Qs will typically be simple algebraic relations, or whatever they are, rather than having to wonder "hold on, is that too simple for an 11 year old to know? too complex?"

[likeneontubing.livejournal.com]

I got 12/15. Still passed, but got 10, 11 and 15 wrong.
I can no longer do maths because I am so woefully out of practice. I can't even remember half my gcse stuff on it :O

I did a maths psychometric test the other day and got AVERAGE score. *weep*

[marrog.livejournal.com]

14/15 in four minutes, followed by six minutes staring at the last question and never getting it.

[andrewducker]

It's amazing how sometimes things which are obvious to one person completely evade another one.

[andrewducker]

(There are two number series)

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Oh, I read the answers and then I got it. But I just wasn't thinking the right way fast enough.

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

Pretty much exactly what I did although I worked out some erroneous pattern for the last one.

[wolflady26.livejournal.com]

I got the same score, except that I missed 7 and 8. I didn't quite grok the code cracking.

[thadrin.livejournal.com]

I went to a grammar school after the 12+...so presumably I've always been good at this sort of thing.
15/15 in 4:24.
With 7 and 8 I didn't bother trying the whole words...I worked out individual key letters (the Ts on "Mast" and "Lest" correspond to the 5s on the end of two of the codes). Is that cheating?

I was not however anything special academically (8 GCSE Bs and Cs...no As. 18 points worth of A-levels. 2ii degree). Says something about the usefulness of said tests. I rather enjoyed the mental workout though.

[andrewducker]

It's not cheating, it's how you do it...

[marrog.livejournal.com]

What Andy said - it's the only way to do it fast enough. Figuring out the fast way to figure it out is half of what you have to figure out. If you follow..

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

14 in four minutes. That last one annoyed me!

[vereybowring.livejournal.com]

Got 14 in 2.35 but got #3 wrong of all things (I hate word games and always go too fast in tests.)

[xquiq.livejournal.com]

15/15 but I've always found this type of thing relatively straightforward.

I wouldn't think this would be a great marker as to whether or not someone had A Level / university potential, when considered in isolation.

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

14/15 in 4.06. I got number 10 wrong - took me ages to figure out it was just subtraction, then when I did figure it out I got so excited I did it wrong :->

But I've done loads of IQ tests (because they're fun!) and practice does make a lot of difference, which seems to defeat the point somehow.

Joining the herd ...

[davidcook.livejournal.com]

14/15, didn't spot the interleaving sequences in the last one either ...
I think it was under 10 minutes - for some reason the timer on the page insisted on counting down from 5 seconds when I pressed Start.

[darkoshi]

I got 15/15 with 37 seconds to spare. Quite stressful towards the end though, where I was worried I was going to run out of time.

[darkoshi]

Is that article implying that in order to pass this 11-plus exam, one would have had to done the equivalent of getting *all* those answers correct in 10 minutes? Are 25% of children really that smart? Or how many questions would one have needed to get correct?

[andrewducker]

Naah, there'll be a passing grade. I certainly didn't get 100% back in the day...

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Finally got to take this test, after they fixed the 6-second bug.
Got 13/15 in 5 minutes. The two I got wrong were the last one (had no idea, just guessed - didn't occur to me it might not be a single sequence) and one of the two code-cracking ones (embarrassing mistake, I worked it out correctly using the key-letters method and then misremembered a 4 as a 5 en route between the examples and the answers).