Anyone else watch this show? I can't see how the questions are ordered. They're supposed to be in order of difficulty, but I find personally a pretty random distribution with some of the supposedly hard ones really easy and vice versa. Anyone else noticed something similar? Incidentally, for questions of the kind posed on the show, it's possible to train to improve your score. These are very similar the IQ test questions and the more you do, the better you get at them over the course of time.
I've not watched that show, but I noticed the same thing with Who Wants to be a Millionaire. I often struggled with the low end questions, which were usually based upon popular culture, but much less so with the questions past the £1,000 mark. The question setters on that seemed to be view anything to do with history or geography as particularly difficult.
+1 It seems for some questions part of the trick is just recognising the type of question which must be common place in IQ tests or perhaps in puzzle books etc.
There were IQ test books, and we practiced on a few before the school delivered IQ tests. In the book store, these were in the same section as the Harlequin Romance novels. Printed on quality recycled paper.
The purpose of the test book, is to understand the canonical form of the question. "Herring is to Whale, as Apple is to: Watermelon", you know, silly proportionality questions. Then, when you're in the real test, these don't seem so bizarre.
From our little study, of the effectiveness of "practicing", we estimated from our test results that we could boost our number by ten points or so. Which in the scheme of things, will not cure cancer or ensure a "higher station in society". Maybe your slop pail would be bigger and hold more brown water. Based on your IQ results.
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The other style of quiz, is Trivial Pursuit type. We had a team in school, which competed with other schools, on television. I was on the backup team (which means I never got called up and I didn't bother practicing because I knew what would happen
-- after all, "I have track team experience").
Our star guy there, he became an art expert over night. He was given a stack of art books around a foot thick. And in around three or four days, we would flash him a small version of an artwork, and he would say "Modigliani" or "Rafael". When that guy became a medical doctor, I bet he didn't pay for his copy of Grays Anatomy, instead choosing to just go to the uni book store and "memorize it". That is one doctor, if you show him a rash, he knows right away, what that is. "Rafael".
In the days of the 11+, which was essentially an IQ test aimed at channelling the top 20% into Grammar School, the estimate for the improvement from studying old exams was nearer five points. Enough to make a difference for those who were marginal cases, but either not needed or not worth the effort for most pupils.
+1 The questions seem to have got easier as each series progresses. That's not my brain being trained. Anyone who does crosswords can normally spot an anagram or word puzzles eg clodogver (dog in clover). The £50k to £80k questions seem to be the easiest. I've only ever answered the £100,000 question once.
You can have an "off day" going into a quiz, and that will likely swamp out other effects.
That's one reason why I don't particular agree with the notion of making administrative decisions based on the result. "Being quizzed once, then put into the slow lane"
If you're going to use IQ tests in that way, maybe they should randomly be conducted once a year, so there is a graph to look at. The error bars on those numbers, are too large to use for decisions based on one quiz. One of the problems with that, is IQ tests come from an outside body, and they cost money.
"The cost of an IQ test ranges from free to as much as $200, depending on who administers the test."
That explains why the scheme is not conducted properly.
Don't know about *mind training* but I find answers to crosswords can come unexpectedly when re-visited after several days. Has the mind been busy or simply using a fresh set of parameters.
Sad to say, I also cheat! The Chambers Crossword Dictionary is a huge help with clear instructions on spotting compositors *mis-direction* and lists of alternative words with similar meanings.
Yes, we had 100 homework questions a week to complete from a book (Top
10 Metric Mental) to prepare us for the 11+. The stress and anguish every week was hellish - the exams themselves (there were 3, but only 1 was the real one, IIRC) were no worry at all.
Another difference from today was that each week our score out of 100 was compared to the previous week's. The same or higher score was fine, but a lower score resulted in boys whacked on the backside with a table-tennis bat, the same number of times as the dropped marks and for girls it was a wooden ruler across the palm of the hand.
We also had separate classes, for a chosen few, to prepare for exams for Manchester Grammar and William Hulme (for the boys, I've forgotten which schools for the girls), both fee paying schools at the time. Having passed for Manchester Grammar, although I'd already decided not to go there, I didn't have the stress of waiting for the 11+ results. On the morning that the letter arrived, my mother shouted up to me and I just went back to sleep for another hour, before coming to look.
I do wonder whether it is actually a good thing for all, as, perhaps in competition with the Grammars, the whole school system regularly outperforms other areas of the country.
There is a radio show I listen to (Boogie in the morning on radio Forth) in the car this has a quiz section (2K minute ) I usually get the history/geography /general knowledge questions correct but then they ask the 'easy' questions who won this weeks Xfactor or what show is Tina Hobbly known for and I haven't a clue.
When the state abandoned the Grammar School system, those took 20% and universities took around 5% of the population. With the current target being to get 50% into higher educations, I am not sure there is much point in segregating the top 20% any more.
My County Grammar proudly displayed the names of those 6th. formers passing the entrance exams for Oxford/Cambridge. Usually in the very low single figures. Perhaps a reflection of current standards in education considering the annual intake of around 100 11+ first formers in the mid 1950's.
When I was in the lower 6th at school, a few of us did the Statistics O-Level (good old GCE in those days), over one year, rather than two. We spent the first half of the year doing it as normal lessons, then spent the rest of the year working our way through the schools library of past exam papers. Everyone passed with either an A or a B.
I remember a total of 11 pupils winning open exhibition scholarships being announced in assembly one year, because the headmaster was proud that a state Grammar School could get such an unusually high number.
John Rae, headmaster of Westminster for 15 years diary, Old Boys is a surprisingly interesting read, particularly on the shenanigans those with contacts get up to get their brats into Oxbridge.
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