

Help me out by taking this spatial ability test - asher_
http://psych.io/spatial/
If you have 10 minutes spare, please give this a shot. Many thanks in advance.
======
NathanKP
Darn! 8/9 This should tell you which one you got wrong, because now its going
to drive me crazy.

~~~
colanderman
Agreed, same here. __SPOILER __The consensus seems to be that 8 has more than
one answer, I definitely see 8A as different from the others (arrows pointing
away from each other as opposed to perpendicular), but perhaps there is
another one. Brain is too tired to figure out another possibility right now;
thanks for the workout :)

BTW #6 I found most difficult (even more so than #9), and #7 was far too easy
for its position.

TO AUTHOR: The answer key for #6 is wrong. It should be A, not C. (The boxes
are on the LHS of the frontmost arrow in A; they are on the RHS of the other
three.)

~~~
iliis
Yes, No. 8 has certainly an error. At least the version I got first, if I load
the page now I get a different set of cubes.

Proof: <https://imgur.com/a/rH5kW>

~~~
screwt
That's exactly the one I had (<http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3186671>).
I was pretty sure it was non-unique, but I'm glad you checked it properly!

------
bambax
9/9... but with submitting twice (first try: 7/9)

The tests that have only different symbols are much easier than the ones where
symbols are repeated.

For example for question 1, without actually building the whole of the cube in
one's head, it's quite obvious that the circle is always on the left side of
the heart, except in one case where it will be at the top, and since the cubes
have to be absolutely identical one doesn't need to look further than the
first difference.

(Edit: if the test is different for each taker, the above example is
meaningless, of course.)

~~~
asher_
Yes, there are many moderators of difficulty.

We had some requirements for the test which included graded difficulty from
very easy to very hard to be able to separate out people of different
abilities over a regular population.

We were supposed to design the first question so that 100% of people got it
correct; to be an easy, practice type question.

Also, you guys aren't even getting to see our hardest questions :D Take a look
at <http://psych.io/spatial/hard.jpg> for example!

~~~
im3w1l
d?

------
asher_
Sorry guys, had an incorrect marking key for the test, fixed it now.

My greatest apologies for those who didn't get a correct score back, ill put
up your scores with the last half of your IP addresses very soon!

~~~
josephg
I'm pretty sure I got them all right, and it told me I only had 2 correct. You
might want to double-check the marking key.

------
T-hawk
Looking for opposing face pairs is the easy method, and works on most of the
questions (I think 6 of the 9.)

If all the opposing pairs are the same, there are two more ways to
distinguish. One is the placement of the symbols relative to each other; the
chirality of the whole object. For an example, think of a six-sided die.
Position it so that the 6 is on top and 2 is towards you. The left and right
faces will be the 3 and 4, in either order, creating two distinct
possibilities.

The other remaining distinction is the orientation of the symbols on each
face. Continuing the die example, with the 6 on top and the 2 towards you, the
2 pips can have either of two diagonal orientations. Orientation creates a
possibility space of 2^N * 4^M where N is the number of sides with 2-way
orientation distinguishability and M is the number of sides with 4-way
distinguishability. On a normal die, N = 3 since the 2, 3, and 6 are 2-way
orientable, and M = 0. Some of the questions here have M > 0, specifically the
arrows and hearts.

(I'm ignoring cases where rotating the whole cube creates duplicate
possibilities. Consider one side with an arrow and 5 blank sides; although the
arrow has 4 orientations, they are not distinguishable. I'm also ignoring the
possibility of rotating a symbol in non-90° increments.)

~~~
asher_
What I have found is that the higher intelligence/spatial ability type people
are able to use these types of techniques on more difficult questions. I do
very well on traditional spatial tests because they are trivial with
relational or structural comparison.

Here is a real challenge.. can you think of a design for a spatial ability
test (that is able to be done on pen/paper) that does not allow for this type
of strategy? :)

------
bumbledraven
9/9, first try. Here's how I solved each one (rot13 to avoid unintentional
spoilers): 1\. Vf gur Fdhner arkg gb gur Pvepyr? 2\. Bevrag gur phor fb gung
gur Urneg vf va abezny cbfvgvba (gvc qbja) snpvat lbh. Jung funcr vf ba gur
yrsg snpr? 3\. Jung funcr vf bccbfvgr gur Pvepyr? 4\. Vf gur Neebj cbvagvat ng
gur Pvepyr? 5. Vf gur Neebj cbvagvat ng gur Pvepyr? 6. Bevrag gur phor fb gur
pvepyr jvgu gur neebj cbvagvat njnl sebz vg vf snpvat lbh, naq gung neebj vf
ba gbc, cbvagvat njnl sebz lbh. Jung funcr vf ba gur evtug snpr? 7. Bevrag gur
phor fb gur pvepyr vf snpvat lbh. Gur neebj vf cbvagvat gbjneq gur urneg va
jung bevragngvba? 8. Vf gurer n gevnatyr cbvagvat ng n pvepyr? 9. Rnpu phor
unf ybbc bs 4 snprf pbafvfgvat bs n oynax fheebhaqrq ol 3 urnegf. Ner obgu
urnegf ba rvgure fvqr bs gur oynax cbvagvat va gur fnzr qverpgvba (abegu fbhgu
rnfg jrfg hc qbja)?

Not sure if this is the kind of spatial ability they're trying to test.

------
cormullion
My head hurts now. An interesting test of one's ability to hold a detailed
object in short term memory while confusing yourself with speculations and
arguments... Knowing psychologists, though, the real test was probably
something quite different.

If it was being timed, perhaps I shouldn't have gone and made myself a coffee
halfway through.

------
Robin_Message
Hmmm, 2 out of 9 and no feedback? I have to say I find that deeply frustrating
:)

Also, I have no idea what you're collecting data for or anything; I just gave
you my time, please let me know what you've done with it. Hope you get the
results you wanted.

Edit: Apparently I scored 8/9, which is less frustrating :)

~~~
asher_
This is for a psych project. It is quite a bit harder than most spatial
ability tests. Most spatial ability tests are easy to do with non-spatial
methods. We have designed this item format to (hopefully) not be the case.

Our results so far have shown that not having a time limit doesn't affect the
results substantially either, unlike most other spatial tests. It is a test of
what you are able to do rather than how quickly you can do something.

~~~
Robin_Message
Thanks, that's cool. Yeah, I had to manually rotate things in my mind to solve
it, although there are a few where the sequences give it away, e.g. 5 the
arrow points away from the cross.

------
screwt
Didn't give me a score ...

I'm fairly certain that for my Q8 (2 squares, 2 circles & 2 triangles on
each), there was no unique odd one out. For A & C the triangles pointed
opposite directions when assembled, and B & D they pointed in the same
direction.

~~~
colanderman
This seems to be fixed now (on C they point perpendicularly), but I'm still
getting 8/9. ('course it's possible I missed another one...)

------
Vivtek
Holy shit. I managed to focus for four, got told I only had one right, which
surprises me. That may very well be the hardest reasoning test I've ever seen.

------
antoko
I'm not sure it takes into consideration the orientation of the image, I was
using that as a short cut - E.G. arrow points to circle and such.

This made about half of them solvable by inspection in under 15 seconds for
me. However the result was 1 out of 9. Using this same approach the 8th
question was obviously flawed, I wasn't about to go back and try a different
method at that point though.

~~~
asher_
I originally uploaded the incorrect items, of which one contained a flaw (I
scored it as correct for everyone in that early group).

In the easy questions you can indeed use those structural techniques, but in
the harder ones you couldn't.

In the 'gold standard' spatial tests that currently exist you can use these
kinds of queues for almost every item very easily, which is why we introduced
this method.

Also, we need to take into account the vastly higher than average intelligence
at HN compared to the general population; you guys are outrageously
outperforming undergraduate psych students so far :-)

~~~
sfeats
So, what is this short study for?

------
vorbby
This is excruciatingly difficult. I have no experience with this sort of a
test, and the method that I chose (albeit quickly and without a whole lot of
thought) was to pick four sides that were touching, and try to find the one
pattern that didn't have the same four sides touching.

This logic obviously didn't work, because I got 1 / 9. Does anyone have a
strategy for this, or is it pure logic?

~~~
shrikant
I found it easier to pick and compare opposite faces.

This didn't work for exactly 3 of them (the ones with repeated symbols), so
went with educated guesses there.

Curiously, I got 6/9.

------
morrow
I got no feedback whatsoever from taking that - it just said "thank you taking
the test!" without any results. Disappointing.

------
asher_
For those of you that took the test earlier, go to
<http://psych.io/spatial/scores.php> for your correct score. It will work as
long as you have the same IP as beofre. Sorry again about the mix up to start.

And thankyou so much to everyone that is doing this!

~~~
spacec0wb0y
Cool thanks. 8/9 :)

------
asher_
I may as well link you guys to <http://cube.asher.io> as well. It only works
in chrome though! It is a web page that I banged up in a night that we used to
create the items. No instructions on it though - try drag and drop :D

------
pchaso
Took my time (around 10 mins) and got 8/9 Decided to make a new try selecting
randomly (around 10 seconds) and got 4/9. Old lesson from engineering school
reminded: usually the most accurate is not the most cost effective solution.

------
webreac
It is a test to see the frustration of people seeing 8/9 when they are sure of
their answers (BBACCADAA). The answer to <http://psych.io/spatial/hard.jpg> is
A.

------
Pechtel
It seems broken to me. 1 of 9 and I'm normally off the charts on spatial
ability. It was sitting in my browser window for a while but that shouldn't
matter if the problem was a wrong answer key.

------
ryanklee
4/9. I was fighting impatience for a good deal of the time. This may be
intentional, but if not, some added context as to the purpose may have given
me more reason to focus. Or not ;-)

------
omegant
8/9 the best way is IMHO not trying to build the 3d mental cube but moving and
rotating the faces to the same axis and then compare. The 3d memtal model is
elusive sometimes

------
arien
7/9... I thought I'd score worse, since they say women have trouble with
spatial problems.

A pity the test didn't say which ones I failed, though.

------
jasonkostempski
8/9 first try, after cheating I figured out what I missed. I swear there's
something wrong with Q5, I've been staring at it for 10 minutes :)

------
Jetlag
This is my Q6. I picked A but the test wants C.

<http://imgur.com/VyW30>

------
spearson23
There's something wrong about this test. There was definitely one of the
question where no three cubes were the same.

------
beobab
Well I tried to help out, but it said I got 0 of 9 correct. When I went back,
the images were all different.

~~~
spydum
what? It just told me thanks for submitting.. I feel robbed! no answers.

------
praptak
Spoiler alert

. . .

Hm. I might have "cheated" on this. I haven't tried to imagine the actual
2D->3D transformations but instead looked for clues in the 2D images. It's a
bit hard to describe - transforming the cutouts in my head so that they match
(or obviously differ) in 2D while still giving the same cube.

Did not submit though, since I got tired after the 4th set.

~~~
asher_
All spatial tests are able to be solved with structural techniques rather than
spatial ones.

We have designed this test in response to that flaw so that when it comes to
the harder items it is much more difficult to do so than to use the intended
mental transformation and rotation techniques.

~~~
loup-vaillant
Partially failed with me. I had to think of more and more elaborate
transformation techniques over time, however, and apparently that failed for
one test (I got 8 out of 9) (I _really_ would have liked to know where I
screwed up, though you may be afraid that cheating skews your results).

 _But_ , to come up with those "cheats", I had to imagine the 3D cube folding
before me. Number 6 in particular had me do a more thorough analysis than most
(but I still came up with a way to cheat, then used it).

------
khill
I'm surprised I got 7/9 considering my inability to nicely position furniture
in a room.

------
OkkeFF
Holy crap. I thought I was good at this; only got 8 out of 9.

------
austintaylor
1 out of 9. I felt quite certain about every answer.

~~~
austintaylor
I'm checking the answers by trial and error, and it seems pretty clear that
the key is still wrong. Is this part of the experiment?

------
sfeats
8/9- that was super fun and challenging!

~~~
asher_
Great! Thanks for your data :D I'm glad you enjoyed it. You wouldn't imagine
how many complaints we got from fellow students.

------
andylei
you should have a "I give up" choice

------
spacec0wb0y
Done. But I didn't get any results?

------
mattmanser
Seems that everyone gets different questions btw, my q8 was nothing like
screwt's, I didn't have that image at all.

It seems to be giving feedback now, 7/9. As others have said, for our own
curiousness it would have been nice to know which ones we got wrong!

