online "IQ test" questions

[Mini-Geek]

The questions come from one of those IQ tests making the rounds on Facebook. They stumped me. Can anyone find an answer and explain how you can come to it?

[R. Gerbicz]

Like these puzzles, for the first one the solution is 78, what else? Let 'a' be the first number in the row, 'b' the third number, then the middle number is f(a,b), where:

? f(a,b)=(-35*a-247*b+10523)/73
%2 = (a,b)->(-35*a-247*b+10523)/73
? f(65,13)
%3 = 69
? f(14,22)
%4 = 63
? f(18,17)
%5 = 78
?

Though using this idea the answer could be any (complex) number. You can generalize my idea to solve the second puzzle.

[Anonuser]

Originally Posted by Mini-Geek

The questions come from one of those IQ tests making the rounds on Facebook. They stumped me. Can anyone find an answer and explain how you can come to it?

My guess would be the following:

For the first test: Let t be the function which maps a positive integer to the positive integer with reversed decimal representation. In particular, we have:
t(65)+13=56+13=69
t(14)+22=41+22=63
t(18)+17=81+17=98
So, I suppose that 98 is the correct answer.

For the second test, observe the following:
Purple?: 12+13+6+19=50
Pink?: 16+20+4+10=50
Cyan?: 6+29+5+10=50
White: Let 18+12+6+x=50
So, I suppose that x=14 is the correct answer.

[Mini-Geek]

Originally Posted by R. Gerbicz

Like these puzzles, for the first one the solution is 78, what else? Let 'a' be the first number in the row, 'b' the third number, then the middle number is f(a,b), where:

[a suspiciously specific formula]

Though using this idea the answer could be any (complex) number. You can generalize my idea to solve the second puzzle.

I don't think they were that intelligent coming up with the question!

Originally Posted by Anonuser

My guess would be the following:

For the first test: Let t be the function which maps a positive integer to the positive integer with reversed decimal representation. ...

For the second test, ...
White: Let 18+12+6+x=50
So, I suppose that x=14 is the correct answer.

I think you've got it, thanks! Now those can stop bothering me.

[LaurV]

One of the stupidest "iq tests" ever. I can come with "intelligent solutions" for all the answers to be right. It has nothing to do with "intelligence" and it violates at least 3 of the five rules for a good iq test

[davar55]

Originally Posted by LaurV

One of the stupidest "iq tests" ever. I can come with "intelligent solutions" for all the answers to be right. It has nothing to do with "intelligence" and it violates at least 3 of the five rules for a good iq test

I thought the second question was solved well.
What are these five rules?

[davar55]

I once took an IQ test and scored a 2,
because they divided by 100 instead of multiplying.

[science_man_88]

Originally Posted by davar55

I once took an IQ test and scored a 2,
because they divided by 100 instead of multiplying.

at least make it believable and say 0.02 no way your iq is 20,000 hate to break it to you.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by davar55

I once took an IQ test and scored a 2, because they divided by 100 instead of multiplying.

A good friend of mine took the ultimate IQ test. He had a gun held to his head, and was told to drive (while his wife was in the passenger seat).

My friend eventually talked the gunman down, and negotiated his and his wife's release.

Interestingly, when the gunman dropped his gun the wife ran for her life leaving my friend to fend for himself...

(P.S. They are no longer married....)

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by davar55

What are these five rules?

Like math-free, culture-free, history-free, profession-free, unique and logic solution, etc.

Generally it boils down to the fact that a 4-year old has the same chances to solve it as you or me. Otherwise is not "intelligence" but something else. Think "sudoku". The difficulty does not change if you substitute the numbers with any symbols, or colored balls. So the concept of numbers is not necessary, and you don't need to learn geography to be able to answer. I will certainly score more than you for sure if the test asks questions like when Stefan the Great was born, or how many electrons go through some trapezoidal copper track on a PCB if the current is this or that. And I bet this has nothing to do with our intelligence. In my mind, intelligence may include more like improvisation, adaptation, combinatorics, pattern matching (the part connected to reasoning, not "eliza"), etc, but not only, intelligence is generally a characteristic strong related to evolution. Should we include knowledge and education? Is a data base (defined as a collection of data and facts, on my hdd) "intelligent"? Is Eliza (pure pattern matching) "intelligent"?

For the most of the IQ tests available I can score quite high (in the 150s-180s) but again, it has nothing to do with the intelligence, but mostly with "experience", "age", "math education", "me being a walking encyclopedia", etc. I went through so many of them, that now I know what kind of answer the author expects from me (even for the tricky questions). There was a time when we (collective we, like in "me and my buddies in the campus") were crazy about IQ tests, and we wanted to show each-other how clever we are. Your results improve in time, by "practice", because you'll "learn" the answers, and some of the authors of the tests are stupid enough to copy from one another (sometimes only steal the idea, sometime copy mot-a-mot the questions).

One of our favorite site when we grew older was the High IQ Society, at the time when the Haselbauer-Dickheiser test (google it, you can still find it on ScribD in printable form) was on vogue (they still have some tests there). We could answer to 18 questions on that test in a ~3 month period, which means an IQ close to 200, according with the authors. Far from us the idea that we are "so intelligent". It is just the experience, and the math-computer-related education, as we said. That test is not "very good", because it is full of math, we solved some problems by effectively building a system with 20 equations (i.e. hard work, low intelligence method, accessible only to mathematicians) before finding the "intelligent way" to solve it (disclosed by one friend) which only takes 5 seconds (if you make the right observation).

Actually, for an "intelligent" James-Bond-person, that test would only take 6-8 minutes (like 10-20 seconds for each question, haha). We sometimes found such "intelligent" solution after we first discovered the answer by using a "hard work low intelligence" method. The test is "very well designed" in this respect, almost all problems have a "double deep", etc. and the authors were "intelligent"/clever/ingenious in this respect. But not all questions there are suitable for "iq testing", although some are very good "puzzles", but not more. I know the answers to 22 or 23 (?? I have to check the papers again) of the questions by "sharing" them with friends. The "most intelligent** man in the world" only solved 23 of 25, and 1 of 25 was never solved by anyone (so the answer to one of the puzzles - that with the encryption) is not known by anybody, except the authors of the test.

What is interesting is that I could not "see" the correct answer for any of the puzzles with the "moving balls in a square", none of them I could get right, this about makes out the rest of the points (from 18 to 25), and my conclusion was that I am totally missing some type of "intelligence" necessary to solve that kind of problems. I would call it something like "space-dynamic intelligence" (nerd-crank name!). We don't have that. Indeed we like "static", profound things, which we can turn on all side and think about them for long time, and we were never too good in coming out with spontaneous solutions to hard problems.

Why I say that the test is "not very good" includes the fact that one of the problem has a doubtful answer (the one with the pink square admits an infinity of solutions, and it is not specified that the smaller one should be uses). But in spite of the fact that I don't consider Has-Dick a "good IQ test", it was arguable just the "most famous", and my opinion is that the second puzzle there (the one with the geometrical shapes equations) is the best and the most intelligent puzzle that we ever solved (better even than the "Einstein test", which BTW has nothing to do with Einstein, but I think this was already discussed on this forum, you know, "who has the golden fish?", that Lewis Caroll's thing).

Maybe a discussion of Haselbauer-Dickheiser test could be a nice subject for this forum? Now, after about 10-12 years, I don't think there is a copyright interdiction or something, anymore. Maybe I claimed that in the past: I am quite interested in seeing a good argument for the furbles problem (25/25) to which I don't know the answer. I even offered money for it in the past, but no taker..

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** the goal of the test was to designate such a man, the man was "labeled" as such, following the submission of the answers to the test (edit: we are not in the "short list" because at the due date we only knew the answers of 16 questions, and the list only includes 18-23 correct answers)

[Mark Rose]

Originally Posted by LaurV

One of our favorite site when we grew older was the High IQ Society, at the time when the Haselbauer-Dickheiser test (google it, you can still find it on ScribD in printable form) was on vogue (they still have some tests there).

Interesting! That's the first time I've seen an IQ test where every question is at least a bit challenging.