tests: are you any good at them?

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and why not, if you're not?

― stockholm cindy (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 19:33 (twenty-two years ago)

is this a test?

― Aimless (Aimless), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 19:39 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm good at multiple choice skill tests (like the SAT/ACT/whatever/Internet fake IQ tests), but I suck at knowledge tests (memorize the names, dates and styles of these 100 artworks). Give me an essay any day of the week, at least I can fake it if I don't have everything memorized.

I have no idea why. Probably because I can't sit still and memorize crap I don't care about.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 19:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Not if they are about numbers or spatial reasoning or hard general knowledge, usually. I am usually a good guesser if it's multiple choice, and I'm ok at essay-writing but my hand gets cramped if I have to write too fast and that works against me. I like quizzes, and have a habit of sometimes turning conversations into quizzes to keep myself interested.

My Mum enjoys telling the story of how when she was my age, she passed the Oxbridge entrance exam and failed an arithmetic test for working at Woolworth's in the same summer. My old French teacher once told a story about how a man she knew at university was a super-genius at tests and had never failed anything in his life but then he failed his driving test in his twenties and had a nervous breakdown.
I think the moral of all this is that tests are bad, but quizzes are good.

― Cathy (Cathy), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 19:53 (twenty-two years ago)

I tend to test well. I think it's a combo of managing to stay relaxed (or in the case of the SAT, not really understanding how important they were), and um, just how my brain works. I did pretty well on SATs (1400 total) and when I applied for my last job I had to take a variety of aptitude and personality tests and I scored right near the top at everything (they let me see the scores after I was hired). I don't think I'm particularly genius, so it's gotta be something else. Oh, I also tend to work really quickly and not check my work or second-guess myself (for better or for worse) which can be an advantage in timed tests.
Something else I noticed when testing people at my last job was that it helps to be really literal in interpreting questions, since most the test authors were really literal in writing them. People who worry about exceptions and gray areas tend to spend a really long time fretting about them and missing the obvious answer. Another reason why "intelligence" tests fail to measure intelligence.

― NA (Nick A.), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 19:57 (twenty-two years ago)

NA OTM.

― VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 20:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm generally very good at tests. The only time I'm really not good at tests is on very long tests, because I get bored easily.

― Possibly Kate Again (kate), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 20:04 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm really good at tests for which I can prepare. I panic like a maniac coming up to them, can't sleep the night before, pace up and down like an idiot, then completely calm down when I actually start to take the test. If the knowledge is in my brain, I will pull it out and use it. However, things like intelligence tests or such like leave me flummoxed.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 20:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, I agree with Nick's last point there very much - partly because I do ludicrously well on tests. I've scored an absurd 210 on an IQ test. I know I'm clever, but that's just being silly. I'm always good at exams generally too - my last was a professional systems analysis exam, and I scored 94%. I understand things quickly, and once you have the grasp of principles and so on, the facts tend to fit and are easier to remember. Also I'm the fastest person I've ever known in things like tests, which is a great advantage when there is time pressure.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 20:08 (twenty-two years ago)

BTW, I never scored especially well on "school" tests about stuff I was supposed to have studied. Just standardized/intelligence type things.

― NA (Nick A.), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 20:10 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't do so well on "school" type tests, as I have an appalling memory. I don't know, there is something that "intelligence" tests measure, and I don't think it's intelligence, but whatever it is, I have it.

I wish the rest of life worked that way.

― Possibly Kate Again (kate), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 20:12 (twenty-two years ago)

NA OTM all over the place, esp. about reading and interpreting questions. Most of the time on aptitude tests, I can tell what's being asked/what the tester is looking for, more than I know the answer.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 20:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Analogy I just made re IQ tests, after watching the great second game in the NBA finals: IQ tests are like defining basketball ability by a shootout from the 3 point line; this is a factor in basketball ability, but it's one out of very many, and testing only that will not give you a real and meaningful result.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 20:17 (twenty-two years ago)

This is somewhat off-topic, but we had these really great personality tests at my last job that measured different aspects of personality, like "Friendliness" and "Energy" and so on. Anyways, this test was somewhat old-fashioned, having been written in the '60's, and one of the categories measured was "Masculinity." The questions were things like "Does the sight of unclean fingernails disgust you?" and "Do you enjoy hunting?" My company had erased these questions, since they were pretty much unusable, but we had clean copies with the questions still in them. They were great.

― NA (Nick A.), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 20:18 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm very good at accademic tests but I absolutley loath them.

― mei (mei), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 20:43 (twenty-two years ago)

As long as they don't involve math, I ace tests. If they do involve math, I am probably one of the most laughable failures to ever walk the earth.

― El Diablo Robotico (Nicole), Wednesday, 9 June 2004 20:45 (twenty-two years ago)

I am more likely at acing them if they contain maths. You can puzzle through them with logic and arithmetic and you don't even have to think.

― Possibly Kate Again (kate), Thursday, 10 June 2004 06:19 (twenty-two years ago)

eleven years pass...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/20/an-insanely-fun-quiz-tests-which-dance-moves-you-know/
i confused the sponge bob and the clone.

― a llove spat over a llama-keeper (forksclovetofu), Friday, 30 October 2015 21:33 (ten years ago)

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