Anti-patterns are problem-solving approaches
that lure you away from the problem's underlying pattern, and therefore lead to an I-don't-get-it feeling
that makes an answer impossible to find. Anti-patterns
commonly fall into one of three categories:
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Analogy breakdown |
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Analysis paralysis |
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Gedanken failure |
To solve any problem you must first decide on a plan, a hypothesis, a means of solution that can be tested
and then confirmed or refuted. Thinking of a related problem
that you solved in the past—a solution
by analogy—can be
productive but dangerous if you and the test developer are on
different pages. Every question on an IQ test is designed to
reveal whether you and the developer are par nobis (on the
same intellectual level), which, presumably, you are when you
can divine his intent with regularity.
Even the simplest problem cannot be solved without first
analyzing it, but overanalyzing wastes time and distracts you
from more productive approaches. Gedanken (German for
thought) failure arises when you are unable to recognize the
pattern the developer sees. Gedanken failure usually occurs when your first hypothesis fails, and you are unable to
think of one more productive.
Anti-patterns frequently arise with sequences and odd-man-out
questions because both fall into a class of
problems called
AI-complete
that cannot be solved by machines and therefore
require human intelligence, sometimes of fairly high order, to solve.
Here are some suggestions to bail you out of the anti-pattern trap:
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