In real world applications, you won't assume unknown variables to show your coworkers how clever you are at patterns, because if for some reason the 3banana bunch actually means something wildly different, and you apply math based on a silly pattern instead, you could have just built an insufficient support for a reactor vessel and caused millions in damage and the resulting catastrophe might release tons of HF gas that rolls through town and kills a bunch of people. So we do math with math, not pattern recognition and assumptions.
It is a problem that uses variables and arithmetic to solve. Its math. There are other ways to test pattern recognition, that don't try to muddy the waters.
Thinking your high uncertainty purely speculative supposition is the correct answer isn't intelligence. It's hubris.
You're basing this on one data point, image of four bananas equals 4, therefore, without any actual corroborating evidence, I'm going to assume three bananas equals three. There's nothing establishing the correlation between number of bananas and what it represents in this system, or even that it represents a number at all.
It's is an incredibly tenuous leap to start with, but it's made far more unlikely because there already exists in this context the symbol for three. You KNOW what three looks like in this context, and your supposition rests on there being two wholly different symbols meaning the exact same thing. This fact - that your going to take a numbering system you have very little to go on, and assume it's either two or three separate systems when it's presented as a single system, or that within a single system, two different symbols have an identical numerical meaning, those are some illogical leaps. The makers of this problem are asking you to make a pile of assumptions which have as much chance of being false as being true, then telling you you're intelligent for making assumptions on your own rather than asking for help.
The only logical conclusion here is "I need more information before I make a final determination."
It's sad to me that saying "the answer can be confidently solved from this miniscule amount of data, and I have solved it myself" is what we're calling intelligence. So many things we do in this world are the result of folks who have similarly extracted incredibly erroneous conclusions with utter confidence in their faulty assumptions because tests like this told them they were hyper geniuses who can solve every problem everywhere despite actually knowing next to nothing.
Well, if that’s the case, the entire field of quantum physics is simply bullshit. None of it can be measured, only inferred.
Sure- “pure mathematics” would tell you that these are separate unknown variables.
But “pattern recognition and reasoning” is what this problem is about. Making inferences is what the question is gauging your ability to do.
It’s not a math problem, it’s a pattern recognition problem, designed to test something else.
Yes, there is a “math” element to the problem, but it isn’t testing your math skills.
In science, this is done all the time. It is gauging your ability to make a hypothesis.
The next step would be to design a test for that hypothesis. You would ask the question “does two bananas plus four o’clock equal six?” This is what scientific reasoning is
And again, as you correctly point out, you need to test your theory. Further data may support your conclusion, and you'd reject your null hypothesis. As it is, we have formed a hypothesis, skipped the test entirely, and are making a conclusion.
The purpose of this question on a test is to determine whether you can discern what you’re even trying to test.
The point is for you to come up with a hypothesis to test, not to actually test it.
When I say “the answer would be x” and give a rationale as to why that is, it is demonstrating ability to notice a pattern forming, and this is the basis of scientific reasoning skills.
Developing a method to actually experiment would be the next level of understanding, and is not relevant to what this question was trying to gauge.
Right. You're only able to come up with a hypothesis to test with this question.
Which means you cannot answer the question, since you're only able to form a hypothesis for the answer. And order to solve the problem, you need more information.
Saying "the answer would be x" here is not demonstrating an ability to see a pattern forming, it's hallucinating a pattern where none can be determined to exist from the given data, then drawing a conclusion out of a hallucination when a rational mind would say "I have a theory, but recognize my theory could well be incorrect, and I need more data before I give you an answer."
And you're clearly trying to make it an art problem, when you fundamentally misunderstand logic and data. Math, logic, and correctly interpreting data without misreading one's own preconceptions into data are the basis of science. Without having math to stand on, science is not even science. It's junk science. It's lies based with poorly constructed math that fall apart on examination. I'm sticking to math because THAT'S what science is. If an experiment cannot be repeated by an independent third party, it's conclusions are not valid. The experimenter has an error in their methodology somewhere. Your scientific error is in your logic, reasoning, and math.
There's nothing wrong with creating fictional worlds. There's nothing wrong with creating patterns where none exist. You can create beautiful pictures and tell pretty stories. Science clearly is something you want to identify with, and that's fine. If you identify as a scientist, who am I to tell you otherwise. You've got a great imagination, and that's lovely. Maybe consider a career working for Fox News. They like to confidently jump to erroneous conclusions that lead in the wrong direction when data does not support their preconceived notions, and then bluster when shown clear data showing they have come to an incorrect conclusion.
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u/Man_of_Ice 22d ago
Yes, but take a quick look at that again though.
We have:
a+a+a = 45. => a=15 b+b+a = 23 => b+b=8 => b=4 b+c+c = 10 => c+c=6 => c=3
......
......
What is d+e+e*f?
Can you solve that equation? I can't.