Optimal thought and optimal fitness through reason, logic, science, passion, and wisdom.
A Three-question Quiz
A Three-question Quiz

A Three-question Quiz

In “Clever fools: Why a high IQ doesn’t mean you’re smart” (New Scientist, 02 November 2009), Michael Bond said:
When Shane Frederick at the Yale School of Management in New Haven, Connecticut, put [these] counter-intuitive questions to about 3400 students at various colleges and universities in the US – Harvard and Princeton among them – only 17 per cent got all three right (see “Test your thinking”). A third of the students failed to give any correct answers (Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol 19, p 25). © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.
Here are the questions (click on the link for the answers):
1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? 2) If it takes five machines 5 minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? 3) In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of it? © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.
Yes, I got all three right. And it didn’t take very long. Note that they are all math questions. Another question (more “logical” than “mathematical”) asked in the article is:
Jack is looking at Anne, and Anne is looking at George; Jack is married, George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

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