...in Hong Kong. (Please don't quote the answer in your response!) In which parking spot number is the car parked? Could you or your children come up with the correct answer within 20 seconds? I confess that I didn't!
So did I. I called Phillip it; it was great fun to watch him trying to discover the "pattern", especially when his dad came in and said "I GOT IT!" in about ten seconds!
It's REALLY simple...but you have to think like a first grader. Might have taken me a bit longer than 20 seconds. LOL. But once I saw it...it was irritatingly simple But yeah, I think being 6 would have given me a serious advantage.
Wow. Not 20 seconds, but I did FINALLY get it after looking at it 3 separate times. Geez. Now I feel stupid. "Hello, I am Kbabe1968, and I am NOT smarter than a Hong Kong 1st Grader".
LOL kbabe! As adults who've had some more advanced math....there are all sorts of things we want to do with those numbers! And all of them are complicated....and wrong! LOL. A six year old concentrates on the things they know...and thinks to himself...ah-ha! Also, keep in mind that a kid from Hong-Kong would have an advantage because when kids start to learn Cantonese, they read vertical characters first....where you read the columns from top to bottom.... right to left. If you were a kid whose mind was not contaminated by higher math...and you were used to reading right to left....this problem would probably be very easy for you.
That said...the instructions are written with horizontal characters...which ARE read left to right. LOL. But yeah..I think experience reading in both directions would still give you an advantage. Native English speakers...just don't think about reading right to left.
Well, I got it in a couple of seconds. I am either wrong or smart enough to get into first grade in Hong Kong!
I asked Faythe. She started reading off the numbers out loud, and said, "I'll figure it out, but not in 20 seconds...." I told her I got it fairly quickly, and her dad even quicker. And then I heard, "OOH! I got it, I think...." It was probably within the 20 seconds!
I find the problem interesting in the way it reveals how we think. Personally, I am fascinated by numbers, so I dove into all kinds of sequences. That's natural for me, and it creates a bias. Some people think in a more expansive way but struggle with detail, which is equally valuable but different. Ages ago, someone gave me a book entitled "Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames". It's the same phenomenon but in a different field of study. Here's an example from it... Un petit d'un petit S'étonne aux Halles Un petit d'un petit Ah! degrés te fallent Indolent qui ne sort cesse Indolent qui ne se mène Qu'importe un petit d'un petit Tout Gai de Reguennes. French speakers beware!