I feel that the JCTI and other image tests are really measures of a specific skill of test-taking. I think I could move up several standard deviations if I learned what types of rules the more advanced questions were using. As it is, I’m just using ‘there’s a rotation theme here, and I’m going to assume that this texture repeats this pattern, and only one of the answers keeps the rotation theme and that texture in that pattern’. I suppose being able to eliminate ‘wrong’ answers and guess randomly is part of what the test is intended to measure, but I can see other patterns that eliminate the answer I chose. I’m picking the patterns based on an internalized guess of what I think the test maker is thinking when he is making the test.
For the record, I scored slightly higher than the Less Wrong median when I voted, so I don’t think there’s a large ‘I don’t get it, therefore it sucks’ aspect to my opinion.
Agreed. Operations equivalent to addition, subtraction, and xoring are also popular on this type of test. I’m sure there are more that I’m not aware of either, and quite confident that the tricks are learnable.
There were at least two cases where I said “Of the five things here, one is the XOR of two of the others, and the XOR of the other two is one of the answers.”
It’s really the questions where I can’t tell if there is supposed to be some progression, or just a series of unordered things.
I feel that the JCTI and other image tests are really measures of a specific skill of test-taking. I think I could move up several standard deviations if I learned what types of rules the more advanced questions were using. As it is, I’m just using ‘there’s a rotation theme here, and I’m going to assume that this texture repeats this pattern, and only one of the answers keeps the rotation theme and that texture in that pattern’. I suppose being able to eliminate ‘wrong’ answers and guess randomly is part of what the test is intended to measure, but I can see other patterns that eliminate the answer I chose. I’m picking the patterns based on an internalized guess of what I think the test maker is thinking when he is making the test.
For the record, I scored slightly higher than the Less Wrong median when I voted, so I don’t think there’s a large ‘I don’t get it, therefore it sucks’ aspect to my opinion.
Agreed. Operations equivalent to addition, subtraction, and xoring are also popular on this type of test. I’m sure there are more that I’m not aware of either, and quite confident that the tricks are learnable.
There were at least two cases where I said “Of the five things here, one is the XOR of two of the others, and the XOR of the other two is one of the answers.”
It’s really the questions where I can’t tell if there is supposed to be some progression, or just a series of unordered things.