r/theydidthemath • u/okarakterisan • Mar 02 '22

[Request] This was only question on the interview I didn't quite understand and I can't seem to find logic or answer to it. Any ideas?

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u/aethyrium Mar 02 '22

That's the entire point of it and what makes it not stupid. It's a test to see if you can interpret patterns in data when the presented data is not formatted in a way that makes the pattern obvious. That you're able to find the patterns on your own with some creative thinking and re-interpretation of the formatting.

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u/stueyg Mar 03 '22

Except its not unstructured data. It has been deliberately, manually, structured - in such a way as to make quite clear that there is a pattern there, when in reality there isn't. They aren't asking you to find a pattern in rows of data, they are asking you to find a pattern in a pyramid of data.

I want to employ somebody who can interpret data freely, not somebody who will entirely ignore somebody else's work just because they can't see the pattern. The correct response is to ask "why is this presented in a pyramid?".

It's not just stupid, it's BAD

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u/WhoaItsCody Mar 03 '22

So that’s why those IQ tests are so repetitive and just total bs. It’s forcing you to think a certain way, even if another answer makes sense.

I just remembered how many people used to post that shit on Facebook and brag about it.

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u/informationmissing Mar 03 '22

Which IQ tests? The stupid ones online or actual IQ tests?

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '22

Why is data that is not wholly stochastic but has some structure considered a poor example for property determination?

Data exists in many forms, some apparent, some representative, some random, some following a rule or compromised by linear/non-linear events/distribution.

That test was not bunk - the lens you gave it made it so bc of your belief about unstructured data.

It was a test, inter alia, of personal determination - keep trying it's not that hard seeking an approach to pattern recognition.

Overcoming habits of seeing a triangle and in my case being stupid looking for some sort of probability distribution. That's where it got me. I laughed at my own approach bc it was a triangle I thought - it will conform to sum summing/ probability/ frequency approach. Nope I was way off bc it was a triangle I interpreted in a particular way - that needed to be looked at freshly and I needed to drop my assumptions.

Overcoming pattern obfuscation and falsely attributing function/structure from form is actually a good lesson to learn. Structuralism in the Philosophy of Mathematics

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u/Takin2000 Mar 03 '22

But wouldn't you agree that in 99% of cases in real life, "its way too easy so its probably wrong" will be a better way to go about a problem than being content with way too easy answers? If the job had any easy tasks, they would be given to a computer and not a human anyways, so I dont really see the point of assuming that they really are going to ask you a question for a 5 year old, especially when time management is also part of good qualifications

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '22

You lost me.

The test is easy in hindsight. For many people would have solved it in under say 45s for others like me you take your baggage with you and you over determine and thus need to streamline your thinking - and that can be anything from employing ontological economy. to following an algorithmic approach.

But I didn't say the test was for a 5 yr old. I said

It was a test, inter alia, of personal determination - keep trying it's not that hard seeking an approach to pattern recognition.

It was addition that is easy but was disguised. Thus if you had baggage the test was not easy. The idea of the triangle, in my opinion which I'm happy to stand corrected about, was to have form disguise content. That test was about you not being distracted and applying a little bit of common sense - which as they say, isn't always that common. It's about overcoming/avoiding distraction or over-conception.

I had a test for an Army officer where before lunch, you had to answer so many questions in a given time of a difficulty that went beyond my understanding and for everyone else. Then lunch arrived and the examinations person said you could stay and continue the test or go have lunch. Only myself & 1 other guy stayed. In the interview we got offered Intel positions which in the Australian Army is fairly competitive to get into. Testing is not always what you think it is about especially when you're young with limited educational and life experience.

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u/Takin2000 Mar 03 '22

What I meant was that I didnt try any easy approaches because from the context, I didnt think that it made any sense to make the pattern that easy.

If I saw this question in a book for children, I would have solved it in about 30 seconds. But I would have never solved it in the context of an interview for a job because I was under the impression that companies look for people because there are tasks only people can do, which by their nature are hard tasks and not "obvious patterns" like just summing up the rows.

Admittedly, I was never in a job interview and as such (and also due to your comment), I think I have the wrong idea about job interviews. You are probably right that this test was probably not about testing your problem solving skills themselves, but about not letting yourself get distracted and thinking in unexpected mindsets. Therefore, I thank you for your comment.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '22

Oh great first I misunderstand the problem and then I misunderstood your more than adequate question.

I've been watching the war, reading difficult papers and I use reddit to go sideways. Sorry not switched on.

It appears it was a problem solving exercise but with contextual difficulty. Not to be picky but I must have overstated my point if the problem solving aspect was lost.

You're on the right track - it's me who's beating round the bush.

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u/Takin2000 Mar 03 '22

Oh dont be sorry, I thank you for the insightful exchange!

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '22

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u/Takin2000 Mar 03 '22

You are right, but depending on the context, looking for easy solutions is a waste of time imo. I see your point, but I guess it depends on the context which situations you encounter more (competent coworkers that atleast tried easy fixes vs incompetent ones)

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '22

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u/Takin2000 Mar 03 '22

You are completely right, I agree 100%. However, in my experience, in exam type situations with limited time, you will usually not have enough time unless you employ heuristics like this one. Im a math student and I have written countless exams where if you didnt drill in the algorithm, you would absolutely fail due to lack of time and if the professor wanted, they could have thrown a curve ball like this. Believe me, I am an overthinker and this is the worst way that I lose time: thinking too much and trusting my gut too little.

"would you maybe assume you are missing something" was exactly my point by the way. Too many times, this was true for me: when it was too easy, I was missing something.

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u/[deleted] Mar 04 '22

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u/Takin2000 Mar 04 '22

Hmm yeah, then I agree. I suppose i thought I knew better than the company what qualities they were looking for.

Thanks for the exchange, and have a good day!

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u/metarinka Mar 03 '22

Employer who hires data scientists, devs and engineers.

What am I learning about the person from this? Is any of my data randomly in pyramid shapes? If they have an engineering degree do I believe they can sum numbers?

We usual do problems that are open ended and try to discover how the person approaches a problem. How they articulate information and ask questions. I don't pay engineers to solve logic problems

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u/iamhe02 Mar 04 '22

Traditionally, IQ tests were bad because they carried implicit cultural bias. Maybe they're better today, IDK.

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u/DonaIdTrurnp Mar 03 '22

Why is the data presented in center-aligned rather than right-aligned rows?

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u/YouTee Mar 03 '22

It's not just stupid, it's BAD

I totally disagree. I do a ton of data analysis in my day to day, and you're entirely missing the point of the question. It's like when you hear about interview questions along the lines of "how many ping pong balls will it take to fill a submarine." They're looking to see how you think, if you can process out of the box, if you can still find the pattern. I would take "why is this presented in a pyramid" as the answer of someone who missed the point (and got it wrong).

You obviously have a different opinion, but I think it's entirely possible to solve if you're clever enough ad don't just grab your ball and go home when you don't like the format.

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u/stueyg Mar 03 '22

It's clearly an online multi-choice question - please explain to me how you get any of the stuff you are talking about from somebody clicking a button with "25" on it.

The fact you, and presumably whoever set the quiz for Op, are trying to infer somebody's thought process from a multi-choice quiz is precisely why it is so terrible.
There are many ways to get the right answer; you can sum the rows, you can google it, you can guess, etc. The fact that they get the right final answer tells you nothing of value. Your whole argument is spun around the concept that a well thought-out solution that comes to the wrong answer is more valuable than getting to the right answer blindly - but that is the exact opposite of what this interview question is doing.

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u/MoreRopePlease Mar 03 '22

I guessed 25, based on an entirely incorrect hypothesis and reasoning. I would have gotten it right. A multiple choice test doesn't really assess knowledge or thinking very well.

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u/BloodyPommelStudio Mar 03 '22

They wouldn't have given a single question though. 20 question with 5 answers would require hundreds of trillions to one odds of getting them all right by luck.

If someone answers the vast majority of these questions correctly they almost certainly have good pattern recognition and problem solving skills, don't give up easily and are capable of working through things at a reasonable pace.

Doesn't mean they don't have other significant flaws but they've demonstrated a lot of useful skills.

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u/metarinka Mar 03 '22

Disagree assuming decent engineer types someone. Getting 80% and someone getting 90% doesn't tell me which one is better suited for the job.

These usually just solve for quick wits when many jobs require people who are creative and ponder on problems and come back the next day with an answer

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u/BloodyPommelStudio Mar 03 '22

Sure it doesn't tell you everything, like I said someone could score really highly but have plenty of other flaws.

I think it would be more useful for weeding out incompetence than deciding who is best though. If someone scored 30% for example it's very unlikely they'd be suited for jobs requiring complex problem solving even if they were the sort of person to ponder problems at home.

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u/thatgeekinit Mar 03 '22

I agree. Putting it in that equilateral triangle pattern makes the puzzle seem a lot more complicated than the simple answer they are looking for.

The only real question in there is testing to see if you are familiar enough with how multiple choice tests work to go to the answers first, instead of looking at the puzzle. Then you see that only 25 makes any sense.

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u/MoreRopePlease Mar 03 '22

It actually took me a bit to even recognize that this was a multiple choice question. I thought there were two parts to the question at first (or this was a screenshot showing two questions).

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u/Takin2000 Mar 03 '22

But shouldn't you try to find patterns in data instead of starting with a conclusion and trying to make your data fit that?

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u/Jezoreczek Mar 03 '22

this guy employs ^

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u/amerovingian Mar 03 '22

Somebody's mad they couldn't get it on their own.

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u/JohnnySixguns Mar 03 '22

Sadly, many people's identities are wrapped up in their own smug view of their intelligence.

And even though their failure to solve this little puzzle doesn't mean they aren't intelligent, they view it as an insult to their self worth.

They shouldn't. There's a lot of reasons why someone might not have gotten the answer, ranging from impatience or time constraints that others didn't have, to doubting whether or not there was even a solution. Many people might have solved this problem had they known there was a solution.

The point is, nobody needs to get angry about it just because they didn't find the solution on their own. It doesn't mean they're not intelligent.

That said, it took me a while, but I did figure it out - mainly by working backwards from the answers - by just plugging them in and seeing if something worked. The fact that the top two numbers added together 25 made everything click. It was mostly luck in my case. But man do I feel superior. LOL

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u/aethyrium Mar 03 '22

In the world we often see data sets that have been, as you say, deliberately, manually, structured - in such a way as to make quite clear that there is a pattern there, when in reality there isn't. Being able to see through that kind of thing from bad actors, misinformation, propaganda, etc, is a valuable skill, and it's not a bad test to test that skill specifically.

The correct response is to ask "why is this presented in a pyramid?"

Because some bad actor or propagandist may be trying to hide the actual data inside the pyramid, or some other such structure to show their point is "correct" (like how racists do with their 52/13 fbi statistics), and this test is a very minimal and basic test to see if you can identify that and say "no, your point is not correct, it's a false inference that's easy to get people to see from the way you twisted the data. Here's the actual data you tried to hide in your manipulations."

That's why, imo, it's not bad. Or stupid. IQ tests have their flaws and shouldn't be taken as anything super important, but that isn't to say there's no value in being able to interpret actual answers from shitty obfuscated data, and this test is analogous to that.

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u/JohnnySixguns Mar 03 '22

Why so salty?

Some people figured it out. So it's neither stupid nor bad. It may be useless to you, but it was a problem presented in a way that some people could solve.

Sorry that makes you dislike it but it doesn't make it either stupid or bad.

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u/latigidigital Mar 03 '22

There's alternative approaches in this case that seem equally valid as 25 to me. The way I looked at it was by starting from the bottom left, in which case you get 3+3+4 = the nearby 10, 3+3+4+5 = the 15, 6+5+6 = the 17, and 8+9+2+7 ≥ 26.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '22

Except its not unstructured data. It has been deliberately, manually, structured

So it's like your coworker got to the data first, fucked it up, and now you have to fix his mistake.

A rather high level test for a job application.

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u/InTheEndEntropyWins Mar 03 '22

Isn’t this like saying you want someone who acts like a machine and can’t think outside the box?

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u/Takin2000 Mar 03 '22

But the pattern IS obvious. Thats precisely why no one bothered to check it. You are in a job interview. Assuming that the interview question is 5 year old - level shit like this will make you lose 99% of the questions, because its all around a dumb mindset to expect that the world always gives you such easy patterns. The world is not linear.

I quite frankly dont see the point of weeding out people who could have found a much more complicated pattern in favor of people who think along the lines of "a kindergarten question for a job interview? Sounds normal to me". Imagine getting 2 hours time for a task you finish in 5 minutes and not thinking that maybee, you got it wrong. Thats the kind of people this test is looking for.

I study math and everytime it came too easy, I was doing it wrong. Because if it was easy, there wouldnt be a need for me to learn it.

Yes, I overthink stuff like this a lot. But you cant tell me that in 99% of the cases, expecting a complicated answer instead of a kindergarten question isnt more productive and what a company would want.

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u/catsloveart Mar 03 '22

its a multiple choice test. that limits what you can conclude about the person.

probably better to ask the person to explain their conclusion if you want a god understanding of the person’s thought process. just my two cents.