On 04/12/2013 08:45, Andy Burns wrote:
Nightjar wrote:

Dave Baker wrote:

The 4 digit multiplication seemed utterly pointless other than to
test a small child. I did it with pen and paper

Both numbers had zero for the units, so the
answer would end in 00, which did not help a lot. The tens were 2 and 8.
2*8=16 Therefore the answer would have to end in 600, which eliminated
three of the four answers.

I also used the "look for a 6" method (along with a sanity check that
roughly 4 thousand squared is roughly 16 million) but they might have
fooled us both by having e.g. a multiple choice of 15,998,600 when the
correct answer would be none of the above.

I would probably taken more care had I actually been applying for a
university place, but that approach was good enough for my purposes, as
was thinking back to the last time I was in an aircraft at 38,000 feet,
on a clear day and remembering how far I could see, to guestimate the
horizon from the options offered.

Colin Bignell