The standard answer is supposed to be hen, as it is the only bird.
I believe the standard answer is a "hen" because it's the only one that is gender-specific. In fact, it is distinctly the odd-one out because it doesn't even refer to a specific genus (or even family) of animal.
I'm all for creativity (I have the same complaint often) but there needs to be some sort of standardization in communication and society. A genius who can't communicate any of his/her ideas might as well be no genius at all.
Strangely, the first reaction I had was that a pig is the only thing that you need to kill to get something from. You can get milk, eggs, and wool from the other animals without killing them.
Not sure why I went in that direction, but I could imagine a lot of farmers and ranchers might think along similar lines.
Isn't that the point of the article? Everyone could pick one of those and reationalize why it should be the "standard" answer, but it doesn't mean it's the only right one. Good test would require candidate to pick an answer and then explain why, but that would make scoring such test too subjective.
Cow is specifically female, so it's not that. There are definitely a few different ways of cutting it, I went for sheep. It's a silly "test" of anything if it has a "correct" answer.
I've seen a few comments on HN and the blog about this question -- I think it's important to note that the article mentions this question was a set of pictures:
>>One test had many rows of small pictures, and I had to choose the odd one out in each row.
So the arguments about the number of letters, the order of the letter, etc wouldn't make sense here.
The standard answer is supposed to be hen, as it is the only bird.
I believe the standard answer is a "hen" because it's the only one that is gender-specific. In fact, it is distinctly the odd-one out because it doesn't even refer to a specific genus (or even family) of animal.
I'm all for creativity (I have the same complaint often) but there needs to be some sort of standardization in communication and society. A genius who can't communicate any of his/her ideas might as well be no genius at all.