Students at prestigious universities have to take a simple test. But many fail. Will you manage to answer correctly? Will you succeed where half the students fail? Harvard University in Massachusetts puts its students through a series of tests. But it’s not the only prestigious university to opt for a particular question that makes candidates break out in a cold sweat. Other universities include Princeton and MIT. And each time, the result is the same: only half the students manage to answer this maths question correctly.
What’s more, the test is sometimes taken by students from less prestigious universities. In these cases, the pass rate plummets. In fact, the failure rate at these less reputable schools is as high as 80%. But what is this test that gives even number crunchers a hard time?
The test is the brainchild of Shane Frederick, a professor and psychologist at the renowned Yale University. Called the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), the exercise was first introduced in 2005. It was created with the aim of observing a person’s tendency to use more constructed thinking to find the solution. According to some research, the CRT measures an individual’s cognitive abilities, in other words, their intelligence.Here’s the test: “A baseball bat and a ball cost 1.10 dollars. The bat costs one dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? The students can choose between 10 cents and 5 cents.
Did you find the right answer? Here it is.
In his book Think Fast and Slow, psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains the solution. And it’s not the one you think. “Spontaneously, people will reply that the ball costs 10 centimes. This is what we call an intuitive response that appears to be the right one, but is in fact wrong. If the ball cost 10 centimes, then the bat would cost 1.10 dollars and the total would be 1.20 dollars”. The correct answer is 5 centimes because 0.05 + 1.05 = 1.10 dollars. The principle of this test is to get rid of your instinct, which can sometimes be misleading, and start thinking in a more structured way. Students who answer correctly are quickly identified by the universities and benefit from better follow-up during their studies.
