Edutest verbal deduction questions

It gives a few short statements and asks what follows from them for certain. Edutest names deduction as one of the skills its Verbal Reasoning test measures. Your child accepts the statements as true and works out what they prove.

The statements can be odd on purpose. What matters is the logic, not whether the situation sounds real. This is reasoning without relying on knowledge from school, which is what Edutest says its Ability tests measure.

Deduction questions fall into a few patterns, and each has a quick way to set it out. Spotting the kind first tells your child what to sketch.

Get the statements out of sentences and into a picture. A sketch holds every fact at once, so your child isn't rereading the clues to remember them.

Must means true in every case the statements allow; might means true in some. Take these statements: Every bus on this route stops at the library. The red bus is on this route.

The red bus must stop at the library. It might also stop at the pool, since nothing rules that out. So "the red bus stops at the pool" is not a correct answer, even though it could be true.

If-then statements need the same care. Take if it rains, the match is cancelled: if the match went ahead, it did not rain. But a cancelled match doesn't prove rain, since something else might have cancelled it.

We wrote these in Edutest's style, with the easiest first. Read each one with your child and sketch it together, then compare your sketch with the working.

Ask your child to point to the line, chain or grid in each working and say how it proves the answer. Drawing the picture first is the habit to build.

These are the slips behind the wrong options in the examples. Check the sketches you made together against each one, because the fix can be in the picture rather than the reasoning.

• Using real-world knowledge. Only the statements count, even when they sound odd.
• A stronger claim than the statements allow. "Not hot enough for the pool to open" is not the same as "a cold day".
• Reading the clue order as the answer order. The person named in the middle of a clue isn't always in the middle of the line.
• Treating "some" as "all". "Some music readers play the piano" says nothing certain about any one person.
• Stopping at the first arrangement. If more than one order fits the clues, an option must hold in all of them.

It can take longer than other kinds, because there's more to read and set out. Edutest says many students will not finish every question, so a puzzle that isn't coming together should get a best guess and a return later if time allows.

Edutest doesn't allow working-out paper. At home, start with full diagrams, then shrink them to initials and arrows, and on the day follow the supervisor's instructions about rough work.

Because there are no marks lost for wrong or blank answers, no deduction question should be left blank.

The same logic appears with numbers. Edutest's Numerical Reasoning test covers series, matrices, arithmetical reasoning and deduction; see the Numerical Reasoning sample questions.

Deduction is also worth comparing with reading inference. An inference is what a passage suggests is likely; a deduction is what the statements make certain. Knowing which one a question wants changes the answer.

Logic grid puzzles from puzzle books are good practice. So is a "must, might or can't" game: give a pair of everyday statements and a claim, and ask which it is.

Ask your child to explain why each wrong option is wrong. A child who can say "that might be true, but it doesn't have to be" has the core skill.

Four examples build the habit; Practice test 1 then shows, in its results by skill, how deduction holds up against the other kinds on Edutest's time. Our deduction lesson has an Interactive version and Notes, and deduction drills give practice in short bursts.