Inductive reasoning - What is the pattern in this question?

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Color me baffled. Hard to solve the puzzle when I can't even figure out what the puzzle is. What are the numbers and letters for? And the blank circles? What am I missing here?
 
LCKurtz said:
Color me baffled. Hard to solve the puzzle when I can't even figure out what the puzzle is. What are the numbers and letters for? And the blank circles? What am I missing here?
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The problem is complicated enough that there is likely more than one solution. Noting that all the examples have green in the upper corner and grey in the lower suggests that a simple solution is to look only at the two numbered boxes next to the circles. Color the circle that is next to the largest number.

If the numbers end up being equal, or if a letter appears there, or if you can put a green circle in the lower box, then you'd have to have another strategy but that doesn't come up in any of these examples.

-Dan
 
Sorry, I still don't get it. The problem is complicated. What problem? What is the object? It may have more than one solution? How do you even know if you have a solution?? Is it in the same class of question like if I list colors red green majenta yellow brown __________ and ask what goes next in the blank?
 
LCKurtz said:
Sorry, I still don't get it. The problem is complicated. What problem? What is the object? It may have more than one solution? How do you even know if you have a solution?? Is it in the same class of question like if I list colors red green majenta yellow brown __________ and ask what goes next in the blank?
Click to expand...
I agree that the problem is too vague. The way I am reading it is that, given the 6 examples, we are to decide whether to put a green circle or a grey circle into the four diagrams across the bottom. But there are many different ways to interpret what you are supposed to do. Can either circle be green or grey or is it just the top circle that can be green? What decides the choice of which color to fill? I picked a simple idea but there are likely many more complex concepts that can be used based on the numbers and patterns in the squares. It may well be that there is no "correct" answer and that this is some kind of reasoning question that is designed to pick out various kinds of thinking depending on how you decide to solve it. Without knowing where the question came from it's impossible to tell.

-Dan
 
Top number - bottom number

If the difference is +, then green white
If the difference is -, then grey white
 
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