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UCAT: Abstract Reasoning

Fili

Dentist 🦷
Moderator
How do you guys attempt the questions through flagging? Set A/ Set B/ Neither questions come first followed by Complete the Sequence/Statement and Set A/Set B. If you always get the pattern for A/B/N questions, each question arguably takes less time than the complete sequence/statement questions. However, I have noticed that A/B/N are generally harder than the two above question types - it's easy to waste too much time. The 'Complete the....' questions seem to take a bit longer but are generally easier imo (e.g. comparing the colour and movement of a square across other boxes).

When doing the actual subtest, do you go through the test once, flagging A/B/N questions that are difficult and then do them? Or do you leave the 'complete the...' questions last even if you don't seem to be able to figure out the harder A/B/N questions quickly?

I just attempt all questions for several seconds and most of the time, I can see somewhat of a rule even if it's not a convincing one e.g. odd vs even number of lines etc. I guess the answers and move on. I flag the questions I'm super unconvinced by and come back to it later on.

Imho, since time is super important for AR and there's like 55 questions, going through all the questions and flagging a specific question type then coming back to the beginning would just be a massive time waster.
 
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The patter is shapes with at least 1 obtuse angle become shaded.

This is kind of a dumb question, but how can you tell which shapes have an obtuse angle? Like the difference between answer option A and B is the bottom left shape but how are we meant to tell its obtuse?
 

Fili

Dentist 🦷
Moderator
View attachment 3542
The patter is shapes with at least 1 obtuse angle become shaded.

This is kind of a dumb question, but how can you tell which shapes have an obtuse angle? Like the difference between answer option A and B is the bottom left shape but how are we meant to tell its obtuse?

If it looks more than 90 degrees aka a right angle, then that's a good enough shot.
 

LeSpicyGinger

Flinders MD II
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Does anyone have any specific advice for sets involving a bunch of the same shapes that are organised uniformly like this? I usually take too long or just don't get it at all :/
 

Fili

Dentist 🦷
Moderator
View attachment 3607
Does anyone have any specific advice for sets involving a bunch of the same shapes that are organised uniformly like this? I usually take too long or just don't get it at all :/

What's the rule? Is A like blacks never touch but greys do whereas B is blacks touch but not grey?
 

whys

Regular Member
View attachment 3607
Does anyone have any specific advice for sets involving a bunch of the same shapes that are organised uniformly like this? I usually take too long or just don't get it at all :/
Hey, I find that if I don't get the pattern (this goes for any type of pattern), then skipping it and coming back to it several times usually helps - each time you look at it will be from a different perspective and it'll be a fresh start. That being said, for these types of patterns where they are all the same shape, I find that it helps to look at it from a birds-eye view. Lean back in your chair a bit and look at it overall instead of counting specific things or actively scanning from a close view for a certain pattern. For this one, my rule is similar to Fili's - in set A, blacks never touch but all other colours do, whereas in set B, greys never touch but all other colours do. With this particular pattern, you can almost completely eliminate any sort of pattern that is number-based (the only one that I checked here was odd/even number of a certain colour). You can disregard things like orientation and angles. A quick glance will tell you that neither set has symmetry. The only other viable option here is position, and checking for position here yields the correct pattern. TLDR with uniform shapes, you can eliminate a good number of options - limiting the possible patterns will help you find it easier, especially looking at it as a whole as opposed to analysing specific things within the pattern.
 

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ThunderDragon

Regular Member
How does one improve in this section? Been doing quite a lot of practice in this section yet despite that, I've been averaging 600 - 650 and the highest I've gotten is a 750? I've got roughly two weeks so is that enough time to get my average to at least 750?
 

hrj0306

Member
View attachment 2639 Hi All, With these types of questions (attached) where certain shapes are assigned a numerical values, is there a systematic way to figure out what shape equals how much ? (made up eg. triangle is equal to 2, square 1 and circle is 5 etc.)
Thanks a lot!

What I like to do is look at the most abundant shape first as that is usually the shape with value 1. e.g. with Set A we can see in box 3 that there are 12 triangles, most likely meaning that all the boxes would equal 12. From there its pretty much algebra.

A big giveaway for me that the pattern involves assigning numbers to shapes is usually if there is a box like Box 3 in Set A and Box 1 in Set B.

Hope that helped :)
 

sevun

Member
Still feeling disheartened over my AR performance right now! I'm doing better than I did yesterday (which is good), but it's still a bit of a struggle. Two questions:
1. I know these are everyone else's experiences so I can't base my own off yours, but how long did it take until you thought you were 'getting the hang' of AR?
2. Are you a SCANS/SPONCS user or do you go look at patterns and go by intuition + use your experience of past patterns, or both? (Note: intuition could be using the concepts of SCANS like shape, colour etc. except you go with the feature which jumps out first rather than going through the checklist)
 
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whys

Regular Member
Still feeling disheartened over my AR performance right now! I'm doing better than I did yesterday (which is good), but it's still a bit of a struggle. Two questions:
1. I know these are everyone else's experiences so I can't base my own off yours, but how long did it take until you thought you were 'getting the hang' of AR?
2. Are you a SCANS/SPONCS user or do you go look at patterns and go by intuition + use your experience of past patterns, or both? (Note: intuition could be using the concepts of SCANS like shape, colour etc. except you go with the feature which jumps out first rather than going through the checklist)
1. It's understandable to feel disheartened, AR can take a while to 'click' and that may as well be a few days before your test. I think it took me a while, about 2-3 months of (very!) inconsistent practice to be able to score decently on AR, and even then I wasn't able to get a lot of 'harder' patterns (I'm not exactly, the brightest student, haha, my brain is quite slow and I don't think I had the latent capability to recognise patterns). I speculate that due to too much practice (+ burnout) my ability to 'see' the patterns took a turn for the worse in the week leading up to my test, which made me extremely nervous because I just couldn't figure out even the simplest patterns. Sometimes, it's good to take a break.
2. Intuition. There's absolutely no reason to be looking at a pattern that is very clearly based around X and be checking for Y. Intuition and trusting your gut takes you further than you think. If you're really, really stuck, then going for a checklist may help you find a pattern you may have missed, but I never really used SCANS/SPONCS and still did quite decently.
 

LeSpicyGinger

Flinders MD II
Still feeling disheartened over my AR performance right now! I'm doing better than I did yesterday (which is good), but it's still a bit of a struggle. Two questions:
1. I know these are everyone else's experiences so I can't base my own off yours, but how long did it take until you thought you were 'getting the hang' of AR?
2. Are you a SCANS/SPONCS user or do you go look at patterns and go by intuition + use your experience of past patterns, or both? (Note: intuition could be using the concepts of SCANS like shape, colour etc. except you go with the feature which jumps out first rather than going through the checklist)

Hey

It took a couple of months to get the hang of AR for me though I'm still quite inconsistent lol.

I'm a SCANS person but its really just a niche use case. I only consider it for sets with lots of objects that don't conform to what my initial intuition suggests. It helps save time as it gives me direction when I stall and start wasting time. I find that stating relationships/characteristics out loud is really helpful. Just say what you can see or identify about each set and see if you can identify commonalities in context to SCANS.
 

sunnyrain

Regular Member
Hello.
I was wondering if someone could help me understand this pattern? I don't understand it and I don't get their solution either particularly when they say stuff like 'all even numbers of lines leave each white circle'
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AJ

Member
Hello.
I was wondering if someone could help me understand this pattern? I don't understand it and I don't get their solution either particularly when they say stuff like 'all even numbers of lines leave each white circle'

Okay - so,
Take a look at the top right test pattern in set A. Direct your vision to the corner of the square and count how many lines extend from the white circle. There is two right? Proceed to do this for all patterns and all white circle, the number of lines extending from the white circles will always be and even number. Now if you go to set B it is the same for white circles (even numbers extend from the white circles). For the black circles, however, there are always an odd amount of lines extending from them. I.e. the square in the top right, if we look at the black circle there are 3 lines extending from it.
Hope this helps
 

N182

Regular Member
I thought the rule for set A was two triangles touch each other and none of the other shapes which are the same touch each other, why do they only consider the two triangles only?
 

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Scorpion

Member
I thought the rule for set A was two triangles touch each other and none of the other shapes which are the same touch each other, why do they only consider the two triangles only?
I'm not too sure but I would argue this has been disproved in Set A due to two factors:
1. There are two boxes (middle row) with quadrilaterals that also touch. This proves that other shapes with equal sides can in fact be adjacent.
2. The definition for triangle in this scenario appears to be, 'any 3-sided shape', as in the top left box two non-congruent (one right angled and one equilateral) triangles satisfy the rule. By this logic, the aforementioned quadrilaterals would disprove the part of your rule which states, "none of the other shapes which are the same touch each other".
 

fishy87

Member
e76wqDO.png

hey guys, can someone please explain the pattern for set B? The explanation says that the blocks can be fit together to form a 5 x 5 L shape that's two layers thick, but I can't seem to figure out how that works?
 

sevun

Member
e76wqDO.png

hey guys, can someone please explain the pattern for set B? The explanation says that the blocks can be fit together to form a 5 x 5 L shape that's two layers thick, but I can't seem to figure out how that works?

Had the same question, I think of it as an L-shape that is two blocks thick. So imagine the letter L made up by one single row of those blocks, and then add another strip of blocks. Like,
1594455065938.png This would be a 4 x 3 L shape that is two layers thick.
 

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