Year 6 pupils across the country are sitting, or preparing to sit, their Sats exams, but how would you get on if you had to take the test today?

Sats, or Standard Assessment Tests, are used to measure children’s English and maths skills in Year 2 and Year 6, and consist of six 45-minute papers.

Here are some example questions from previous exams to see how you get on.

Question 1

Which word is the subject of the below sentence?

A whale lives in the sea.

Question 2

Which sentence uses commas correctly?

A – The band will perform at concerts in Belfast, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham and, Sheffield.

B – The children could choose to play netball, cricket, hockey or tennis.

C – Owls badgers, hedgehogs and bats are all nocturnal animals.

D – Painting, drawing, sculpture and print-making, were all options on the art day.

Question 3

Match each word to its antonym.

Near                                                 Close

Cold                                                 Far

Distant                                             Hot

Warm                                              Cool

Question 4

4/9 + 2/3 = ?

Question 5

7/10 of 30 = ?

Question 6

6 + 4 / 2 = ?

Answers

  • Question 1 – Whale
  • Question 2 – B
  • Question 3 – Near and Far, Cold and Hot, Distant and Close, Warm and Cool
  • Question 4 – 10/9 or 1 and 1/9
  • Question 5 – 21
  • Question 6 - 8

Cognitive Reflection Test: Can you pass the shortest IQ test?

Less than one in five people pass this IQ test, thought to be the shortest in the world only three questions long.

How will you get on?

What are the questions?

1. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

2. If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?

3. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?

What are the answers?

These are the three most common answers that people guess, but they are actually incorrect:

1. 10 cents

2. 100 minutes

3. 24 days

The correct answers are:

1. Five cents

2. Five minutes

3. 47 days

Here are the answers explained

Presh Talwalkar, the author of The Hoy of Game Theory: An Introduction to Strategic Thinking, explained how to work out the correct answers for each of the three questions on his blog, Mind Your Decisions.

1. Say the ball costs X. Then the bat costs $1 more, so it is X + 1. So we have bat + ball = X + (X + 1) = 1.1 because together they cost $1.10. This means 2X + 1 = 1.1, then 2X = 0.1, so X = 0.05. This means the ball costs five cents and the bat costs $1.05

2. If it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets, then it takes one machine five minutes to make one widget (each machine is making a widget in five minutes). If we have 100 machines working together, then each can make a widget in five minutes. So there will be 100 widgets in five minutes.

3. Every day FORWARD the patch doubles in size. So every day BACKWARDS means the patch halves in size. So on day 47 the lake is half full.