Using logic to solve a test question

Strategic thinking is so powerful you can often find the answer just by reasoning carefully.

I have written before how I have used strategic thinking when hiring a plumber and also when negotiating a job raise.

The following is another example showing the power of strategic thinking. It comes from an email a long-time reader.

About two years ago, when I was learning chinese at university, the teacher then gave us the exam and I had to figure out how to solve an exam I didn’t really understand.

One part of the exam was this: there were three phrases and only one is correct. You can figure it out which one is correct by simple logic.

1. 今天是个女日子，因为我在可逻辑学。 2. 今天是个好日子，因为我在学逻辑学。 3. 今天八个好日子，因为令在学逻辑学。

Have fun. Btw: I got more points at this part than the guys and gals actually learning the vocabulary and grammar.

As the email states, you don’t need to understand any vocabulary or even the question to find the answer!

I tried my best guess, and I am happy to say that I got it correct.

Can you figure it out? Write your guess and I’ll post the correct answer and translation in a couple of days in the comments.

Also, I posted a solution to the puzzle from last week escaping a thief. Thanks all for the comments!



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  • Christina

    I’m going to guess and say 2? Just because it’s the only one that shares its characters with at least one other answer for EVERY character. #1 has a different fourth to last character than the other two and #3 has a different 3rd character than the other two, but two doesn’t have any characters that are unique to it.

  • Frank

    Yeah, must be #2. Any differences pit two sentences against one, and my guess is we can drop the one in the minority.

  • Jean-Philippe Burelle

    As the two above posters have stated, number two is the most likely to be the correct answer.

    This kind of thinking reminds me of auto-correcting codes, where small perturbations of the message are still identifiable…

  • Yannick

    Glad I was able to contribute something to your blog.

  • Christina

    Now the REAL tricky part is if the person writing the test is AWARE of that logical assumption and tries to account for it… (lol, I usually keep that in mind when writing my tests/quizzes)

  • http://www.mindyourdecisions.com/blog/ Presh Talwalkar

    Thanks again Yannick for the email.

    Yes the answer is 2 as everyone guessed. The phrase translates to “Today is a good day, because I’m studying logic.”

  • wormed7600

    Unfortunately, standardized test makers have gotten wise to this. I’ve gotten questions with five choices, four of which are very similar in wording and one that was completely different. Guess which was the answer.

  • Sachin

    “Today is a good day, because my guess turned out to be correct.”
    But I don’t think we can be certain that (2) is the right answer?
    To me who doesn’t know the rules of the language it options look like
    1) ..a ..b, ..c ..d
    2) ..a ..B, ..c ..D
    3) ..A ..B, ..C ..D
    (four differences in each sentence).

    Now, from this I can only guess that (2) may be correct as it falls between two extremes. But can I be sure?

    Cheers,
    Sachin

  • Chinese Dude

    B is correct because of the logic as stated above, but I also know 2 to be correct because I can read it lol. The benefits of having a bilingual education w00t.

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