http://www.mathtricks.org/math-tricks/a-hong-kong-math-trick/
Chinese are taking over the world.
It’s a neat trick, but I find it hard to believe that it is on a first grade admissions test anywhere in the world.
Regards,
Shodan
I agree. I got it right away, but it’s based on a trick, so it seems to be one of those things you either catch right off the bat, or you have to stare at it for awhile before it clicks, if ever. Then again, it’s not inconceivable to me to be on a test for a slightly higher grade.
Not “first grade”.
The caption on the image itself says “Hong Kong Elementary School First Grade Student Admissions Test Question”.
If it’s a real question from a real test, I suspect it’s what I’d call a placement test (the better you do, the more advanced class you’re assigned to), not what I would call an admissions test (fail the test and you won’t be admitted).
http://www.chinasmack.com/2014/pictures/hong-kong-elementary-school-admissions-test-question-21.html
I still have my doubts about the whole thing.
Would this be the equivalent of Facebook glurge?
I don’t blame you for doubting that it’s a real question from a real test. But it’s certainly a question that a first-grader could answer. And knowing this constitutes a clue, since it should serve as a hint not even to try complicated approaches that a first-grader wouldn’t know about.
It would also be a clue if the accompanying picture had been a photograph, indicating that the sequence did (or could) arise naturally rather than being artificially contrived.
What surprises me (if it’s a copy of a real test) is how many Chinese characters a student is expected to learn in kindergarten in Hong Kong. (Most people in Hong Kong are not fluent in English, so they’d need to read the Chinese version of the question.)
I have no problem believing this was a real test; it’s like the drawing of a bus question. Little kids’ minds aren’t cluttered with all the rules and learning that have been forced on us, so they notice simple things, like a missing door,
or upside down information.
That’s a good point. Adults have learned to deal with information overload by filtering out and sorting data enough to look for likely patterns. We learn how things generally work in the world and are constantly on the lookout for things that remind us of that, knowing that those are more likely to be important things. Unfamiliar things are more likely to be noise.
To make people believe that is exactly why they put the question in the test in the first place… The same reason they force their kids to learn Tang poetry by heart (without understanding it), or spend their time studying IQ test techniques (like for this question), just so they can say : look how smart we are ! Especially my kid !
And many people in the Chinese world are the first to recognize the absurdity and illusory nature of Chinese-style education …
Looks like a hoax to me. Urban legends are just as common in China as they are here.
They didn’t say what kind of school. It might be a school for gifted students, hence difficult, tricky questions.
I got it right away, but I don’t see how it’s maths.
And it smells of urban legend to me. One of those things where a mildly interesting image gets turned into something supposedly wayyyy more significant and newsworthy by the addition of the right caption.
I want to know where a kid has to pass an exam to get into the first grade.
My cousin did…Houston, TX. It was a program for gifted kids. He went to regular school from 2nd grade on though, so he’d be in the same school as his younger
sister. The gifted program was way across town and logistics were tough once both were in school.
My school tested applicants to Kindergarten. Not after that, IIRC.
I didn’t get the answer right. I made a pattern up in my head around the first numeral in each pair (1->0, 6->8, X->9). My answer was right - for the pattern I detected. I doubt the test administrators would have been impressed, though.
Never mind solving the problem, are beginning first graders in Hong Kong already supposed to know how to read (and read English, no less, when most will be Cantonese speakers) and count up to 100?