Character of the Test.
Publishers and editors have for many years insisted upon having intelligent compositors and type-setters. The printer’s pi is probably as comprehensive a test of intelligence as any in the Mentimeter series. In the Binet tests, one of the most interesting parts of the examination is where children are asked to take certain words and rearrange them to make a sentence. This is not exactly the same problem that the type-setter faces with pi, but it is related to it. A disarranged sentence test was used in the military examinations, but in order to make the scoring simple and to include elements of intellectual capacity other than ability to rearrange words, the soldiers were asked to check the resulting sentence as “true” or “false.” Here again, without being able to read a single word of the sentences which had been disarranged, the soldiers would be able to make check marks in the correct place by mere chance in half the cases. The method of scoring used in the Army was calculated to overcome this difficulty, but even then the results were not as reliable as they should be in the case of the Mentimeter form presented below.
This test contains twenty-five sentences in each one of which the words have been mixed up and disarranged so that a real amount of imagination is necessary in order to guess what the sentence was in the first place. The first sentence contains only three words and is very easily arranged, while the later sentences are quite complicated and difficult. In order to indicate what the true arrangement of the original sentence was, each candidate is asked to place a period at the end of the word which would be last if the sentence were properly arranged. The resulting score may be taken as a fairly reliable index of ability to “unscramble” words in sentences.
This test is very closely related to several of the other tests which appear in the Mentimeter series in that it involves the ability to think about words and the things for which words stand and the relationships between these words and these things. The type of ability necessary for this test is the sort which makes for success in education and the learned professions, provided social and personal qualities are equal to the intellectual attainments.
This test is also very entertaining as a parlour game and may be used without offense to any one, if no mention is made of the relationship of the results to mental ability.
Directions for Giving the Test.
When the candidates have been seated and supplied with pencils, the examiner should distribute copies of the test booklets with the direction that none be opened until the instruction to do so is given. After having the identifying information called for on the blanks of the title page filled out by the candidates, the examiner should ask that all candidates look carefully at their papers and read silently the directions while he reads them aloud: “A sentence is a list of words which says something that we can understand. When you open the papers, you will find on the inside twenty-five sets of words which are not good sentences as they stand, but which would make good sentences and would sound sensible if they were changed around and put in a different order. Look at the samples given below:
Sample A: KILL MICE CATS
Sample B: HAS BOOK IT PICTURES THE IN
“Sample A would make a good sentence if it were arranged in the order ‘CATS KILL MICE’ and therefore there should be a period after the word ‘mice’ to show the end of the sentence. In Sample B, we should have a good sentence if the words were changed around to read: ‘THE BOOK HAS PICTURES IN IT.’ The end of the sentence is ‘it,’ and therefore there should be in sample B a period after the word ‘it.’