Hm. When I originally read your description of solving the matrices, it seemed to me like your algorithm was shaped the wrong way- I would look at the matrix, identify the transformation, predict what the right answer would be, and then find it in the options. (I only used serious thought and hypothesis falsification on the last question.) Now I’m less confident that I understand my algorithm for identifying the transformation.
That loss of confidence is a clue that you are understanding the process better.
How do you “identify the transformation”? That’s the whole banana!
There is a separate step, finding the answer in the set of answers, which is a partial confirmation. If one is not certain of the entire transformation, but has identified aspects of it, possible elements of the transformation, sometimes the choice can be made by elimination among the answers. But the process you describe is my own default, and that’s how I started. At first it was trivial. It got less simple. Then I saw that I was going to run out of time! Then it became a matter of optimizing what I was going to answer, once I got that I was unlikely to complete.
Obviously, I could take the test again, but that would defeat the purpose. I did go back to review certain problems, for the discussion here. Yes, to be a more standard intelligence test, the results should be reported by age. I suspect that, unless someone has trained for this kind of test, raw results will peak at a certain age, then decline after that.
Or the test could be untimed, in which case I’d expect I could do very well. I might do better than some younger people, just as “smart,” who aren’t as careful. I would not generally be satisfied with less than total, accurate prediction, with a simple algorithm. (Any answer could be justified with a complicated enough algorithm.)
Back to the question of how the transformation is identified. It’s an excellent question. It is questions like this that must be answered to develop artificial intelligence.
And for general artificial intelligence, they must be answered in the general case. It may be possible to find specific, “trick” algorithms that work for specific problems. But humans can solve these problems “out of the box,” so to speak, without almost no instruction. How do we do that?
Rather obviously, we are designed to detect patterns of behavior, which we use for prediction.
That loss of confidence is a clue that you are understanding the process better.
How do you “identify the transformation”? That’s the whole banana!
There is a separate step, finding the answer in the set of answers, which is a partial confirmation. If one is not certain of the entire transformation, but has identified aspects of it, possible elements of the transformation, sometimes the choice can be made by elimination among the answers. But the process you describe is my own default, and that’s how I started. At first it was trivial. It got less simple. Then I saw that I was going to run out of time! Then it became a matter of optimizing what I was going to answer, once I got that I was unlikely to complete.
Obviously, I could take the test again, but that would defeat the purpose. I did go back to review certain problems, for the discussion here. Yes, to be a more standard intelligence test, the results should be reported by age. I suspect that, unless someone has trained for this kind of test, raw results will peak at a certain age, then decline after that.
Or the test could be untimed, in which case I’d expect I could do very well. I might do better than some younger people, just as “smart,” who aren’t as careful. I would not generally be satisfied with less than total, accurate prediction, with a simple algorithm. (Any answer could be justified with a complicated enough algorithm.)
Back to the question of how the transformation is identified. It’s an excellent question. It is questions like this that must be answered to develop artificial intelligence.
And for general artificial intelligence, they must be answered in the general case. It may be possible to find specific, “trick” algorithms that work for specific problems. But humans can solve these problems “out of the box,” so to speak, without almost no instruction. How do we do that?
Rather obviously, we are designed to detect patterns of behavior, which we use for prediction.