The Advanced Numeracy Test Workbook - Mike Bryon [1]
Users of this book are likely to face a psychometric test when they apply for a job or course of study. In this context psychometric tests are used for selective purposes and represent major competitions. You may well be competing against thousands of other candidates for a handful of positions. To succeed, you will have to take this challenge very seriously.
Everyone can improve his or her test score with practice. Even the numerically accomplished through practice will ensure that they maximize their advantage. Candidates who have not used their numerical skills for some years will need to relearn the rules and regain their lost speed and accuracy. Those who never got on with maths or science at school or university may need to commit many weeks of effort to mastering the skills they previously managed without.
Start your programme of practice by doing Test 1; then score yourself and use the interpretation of your score in the final chapter to determine the amount and type of practice you should undertake. Make sure that you start practising in good time. It is likely that you should practise for a minimum of 12 hours and perhaps as much as two hours a day for many weeks.
Be sure that you practise on material that is similar to that in a real test. It is essential that you establish the type of question contained in the real tests and restrict your practice to questions that are similar or the same as those that you face. The organization that has invited you to sit the test should provide you with detail of the type of question either as a booklet or on a website. Use this information to identify suitable practice material.
The limiting factor in terms of how much improvement can be realized through practice is often the amount of realistic material that is available on which to work. This book is intended to complement the existing Kogan Page book How to Pass Advanced Numeracy Tests, Revised Edition (2008). It achieves this by providing masses more practice material, answers and explanations. Most of the practice material is organized as realistic tests. This means that you can really get down to improving your exam technique and becoming well practised at answering questions under exam-type conditions. Interpretations of your score in these mock tests are offered. These comments are intended only to assist in deciding how much and what sort of practice you should concentrate on. Don’t read too much into your score or its interpretation. There is no pass or fail mark in these practice tests and you should not draw conclusions about your suitability for any career or your ability or intelligence generally.
When practising, focus on what you are least good at and keep practising it until you get it right every time. Use the feedback on your score in the mock tests to ensure that you undertake enough of the right kind of practice.
Avoid becoming calculator dependent. Employers want staff who can use a calculator but who can also see when the calculator’s answer is incorrect. So revise and sharpen your mental arithmetic, practise estimating the answer by rounding the sums to more convenient figures and using this estimate to confirm the answer given by the calculator.
Use a calculator sparingly when working through this book. In some instances it has been suggested that you do not use a calculator for all or some of the tests. In some real tests a calculator will be provided, but not in others, so when practising use one sparingly if at all and primarily only as a tool with which to further your understanding. Note that if a calculator is provided it may have few features – it may not have a squared function, for example, in which case you will have to calculate powers long hand.
Do not rely on this title as your only source of practice material: a proper programme of revision will require more material than contained here. As well as the companion book, How to Pass Advanced Numeracy Tests (2008), How to Pass Data Interpretation Tests (2009) will prove valuable for this increasingly common assessment.