How to Pass Advanced Numeracy Tests

Improve Your Scores in Numerical Reasoning and Data Interpretation Psychometric Tests

Mike Bryon

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780749467906
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

By testing expert Mike Bryon, How to Pass Advanced Numeracy Tests provides a wealth of practice questions and detailed explanations to boost your ability in a range of numeracy assessment tests. With over 500 practice questions and four realistic tests, it is ideal for graduate and management level candidates who want to revise the basics and progress to more difficult questions. Sections on quantitative reasoning, data interpretation and business judgement offer realistic practice to help you rise to the challenge and beat the competition.

Part One

Psychometric tests and practice

Chapter 1

Demonstrate your true potential

How this book will help

This book provides highly relevant practice questions and explanations that will help candidates prepare for psychometric tests of numerical skills. It deals extensively with the core competencies tested at the advanced level including: analytical skills in a financial context; the comprehension of financial language; the ability to discover data relevant to financial decisions; decision making with numerical data; the ability to learn and apply numerical ratios and solve business problems. It also reviews the numerical methods and rules that underlie psychometric tests of numerical skills.

Many readers of the existing Kogan Page list of testing books have requested more practice numerical questions and more challenging material than is currently available. In response, this title offers many hundreds of new questions, including four realistic mock tests relevant to numerical skills tests used by employers and educational institutions today.

Like a real test, each chapter starts with easier questions that get progressively harder. Again, in response to readers’ requests, many more detailed explanations to answers have been provided.

The challenge of numerical tests

Employers’ numerical tests represent a considerable challenge to candidates who have specialized in numerical disciplines, let alone those who have not. Often accomplished individuals may not have practised their numerical skills for some years and need to revise them if they are to present themselves as the all-round candidate who possesses both numerical and verbal competencies.

Even if you feel confident with your numerical skills, these exercises will help you to achieve, as psychometric tests are used to recruit to many top jobs, careers and professions and there is considerable competition amongst many candidates. You have to be at your very best if you are to succeed in your chosen career, and only practice will ensure that you maximize the advantage you enjoy over others.

What are psychometric tests?

The user of this book is likely to face a psychometric test in relation to their work or study. Many readers will have applied for a job or course of study and found that the process involves them taking a test. In this context psychometric tests are used by the institution or employer for selection purposes.

The tests comprise a standardized series of problems, either multiple choice or short-answer, taken with either pen and paper, at a computer terminal or, increasingly, online. The conditions under which the test is taken will be the same for everyone. Strict time limits are likely to apply and the results will be marked or scored in a way that allows comparisons to be drawn between candidates. At the graduate and professional end of the testing spectrum they are likely to be tests of endurance lasting many hours. They comprise a series or battery of tests sat one after the other. It is therefore all the more important for candidates to adopt strategies to maximize their score.

What to expect on the day

Think back to the days of examinations at school or university. You will attend a test centre with a room set out either as an examination hall with small desks or with banks of computer terminals, depending on whether you face a paper and pen or computer administered version of the test.

Other candidates are very likely to be present. In some instances there may be many other candidates. A test administrator will welcome you and explain the process. He or she will be following a prepared script and will be happy to answer any questions that you may have, although the answers given may seem rather brief or superficial. The administrator will be reluctant to stray far from the script so that all candidates (including those who have attended on other days and will not have heard your question) receive the same information and experience the same test conditions.

If you suffer a disability that may affect your performance in the test or that requires you to sit the test under different circumstances, contact the organization that has invited you straightaway.

Interpreting your score

The scoring of tests is quite complex and individuals responsible for the interpretation of results should be trained to a level recommended by the British Psychological Society. Scoring involves comparing a candidate’s score against the scores of a sample of the wider population with broadly similar backgrounds. Unsurprisingly, there is a tendency among recruiters to assume that the higher a candidate scores, the greater the candidate’s likely performance in the job. Equally common is the tendency for the recruiter to be relieved that poor-scoring candidates, whom the test predicts will not perform well in the job, have been identified in such a clear-cut way.

However, doing well or badly in a test does not necessarily mean that you have or do not have the potential to perform well in a particular job. Tests are at best only indicators of potential. Had you been less nervous or better prepared on the day of the test then you might have realized a considerably different score and been classified quite differently. Performance in the majority of jobs is a difficult thing to define and is influenced by a wide range of factors. The occupational psychologist must attribute to the job in question a single set of criteria against which to assess performance, and this risks attributing to the workplace too simplistic a model of what makes someone good at his or her job.

If you fail a test it does not mean that you do not have the potential to do the job or pursue the career. You may be perfectly able to do the job and indeed would pass the test if you took it again. Ask the organization to provide you with feedback on your score. Some organizations are happy to do this and their comments will help you to identify any areas in which you need to improve. Try to recall and note down the types of question and the level of difficulty. Plan a new programme of practice and concentrate your efforts on improving your skills in the areas in which you did least well.

Hundreds more practice questions and tests are available in the companion title The Advanced Numeracy Test Workbook. Additional advance material is also available in the Graduate Psychometric Test Workbook. Both titles are published by Kogan Page.

Chapter 2

The winning approach

The ability to do well in a test is not some innate quality over which you have no influence. Your score is to a large extent dependent on your approach on the day and the degree to which you are prepared for the challenge.

How you approach a test is critical to success. It is important that you treat it as an opportunity to demonstrate your true potential. Avoid feelings of resentment or a fear of failure whereby you commit less than your full worth. If passing the test means that you can realize a life goal then you have every reason to try your best and attend fully prepared.

Studies have shown that the difference between the soloist in an orchestra, the top athlete or chess grandmaster and the rest is often down to practice, practice, practice. The key is to stretch yourself and not simply repeat tasks you can already do easily. Practice before a test is essential and can make a significant difference to your performance. Practice makes a difference in many types of test, including numerical tests. It is obvious that practice will help because it means you are likely to make fewer mistakes and are faster against the often-tight time constraints. Importantly, practice allows you to revise forgotten rules and develop a good test technique. This involves becoming familiar with the format of the questions and maximizing your score through, for example, educated guessing.

Remember, when used as a part of a selection process you should treat a psychometric test like a competition in which you must do better than other candidates. If passing the test is important then you should be prepared to make a major commitment in terms of practice before the real test, starting as soon as possible. Other candidates will make such a commitment and if you don’t, you risk coming a poor second.

Key stages to a winning approach

Under the two headings ‘Work harder’ and ‘Work smarter’ below, there are eight sections offering advice and tips on the best approach to adopt when preparing for a psychometric test.

Work harder

Make time for practice

Given that you use your time sensibly and that you work in a way which reduces your weaknesses and maximizes your strengths, the amount of time you can devote to intelligent, directed practice will be crucial. You have already decided that this test is important to you, so you need to make sure you find time to do yourself justice and to demonstrate your potential. Those who succeed are often those with the greatest desire, the greatest tenacity.

Start your practice as soon as you suspect you might have a test (though you should make sure you are working on the right kind of exercise – see ‘Work smarter’ below).

Work smarter

Decide how to practise

Everyone can improve his or her test score with practice and the more you practise something you find challenging the better you will do. However, the optimum amount of practice depends on your starting point. For example, the candidate who is otherwise likely to fail by only a few marks stands to gain a lot very quickly because a little practice is almost certain to mean that they pass something they would otherwise have failed. Someone who has not used their numerical skills for some years will need to relearn the rules and regain their lost speed and accuracy before they can demonstrate their true potential. This may require a quite considerable commitment. A candidate who never got on with maths or science at school and specialized at university in an arts subject may need to commit many weeks of effort to master skills they had previously managed without. Be clear about what you need to practise and make time to do it.

Start your programme of practice in good time

Try to place yourself somewhere on a scale between reasonably confident and someone whose numerical skills are very rusty. If you fall within these bounds then the amount of practice you need to undertake is likely to lie between a minimum of 12 hours and putting aside a few hours a day for three or four weeks.

It is best to practise up to the day before the test. But try to leave yourself a little scope in case you underestimate the challenge and need more time than you initially allowed.

Be clear as to the type of test you face

Improvements in scores are obtained by practising on material similar to that which occurs in the real test. It is essential, therefore, that you establish the types of question you face and find material as similar as possible. The organization might have sent you a description of the test or have a website that contains a number of sample questions. If this is not the case, call them and request a description of the test and as much information as possible. Every bit of information helps, so try requesting a verbal description over the telephone or simply ask them to list the titles of the sub-tests that make up the battery and the name of the publisher. Establish if the test is administered with paper and pen or at a computer terminal, for how long you need to attend and whether or not a calculator is provided. Be aware of the fact that sample questions are usually less difficult examples of the type of question contained in the real test.

Plan to undertake two sorts of practice:

1 Practice without time constraint and in an informal relaxed situation. The aim of this sort of practice is that you realize the demands of the questions and the mathematical pri...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Imprint
• Table of contents
• Acknowledgements
• Mike Bryon – A pioneer in test coaching
• Part one: Psychometric tests and practice
• Part two: Hundreds of really relevant practice questions
• Part three: Answers and many detailed explanations
• Full imprint