Diagrammatic Reasoning Tests

What are diagrammatic reasoning tests?

Diagrammatic tests use shapes, patterns and figures, rather than numbers and words. They are used by recruiters to assess your ability to think logically and solve complex problems.

What skills does diagrammatic reasoning test?

Diagrammatic reasoning assesses both the strength of your inductive reasoning and your deductive capacity. It can be summed up by referring to these two distinctive categories.

These tests will check if you can draw conclusions from the premises, and how quickly it will take you to do so.

Your task is to deduce the underlying logic of a pattern and guess what is next to follow.

What is the diagrammatic test format?

You will be presented with multiple options, and have to choose which one fits. To do this, you’ll need to view the shapes to find rules which can be applied across the sequence.

As this is the type of activity you’ll rarely come across in day-to-day life, it’s important to practice beforehand to familiarise yourself with the types of questions you’ll face.

Like with other psychometric tests, you’ll typically have about one minute per question.

How are diagrammatic reasoning tests different to logical reasoning tests?

There’s normally very little difference between diagrammatic reasoning and logical reasoning tests. Often they’re the same thing, but have different names. The only difference is that sometimes logical reasoning tests won’t involve diagrams.

While diagrammatic reasoning tests will always involve diagrams, occasionally logical reasoning tests will take other forms.

Occasionally, logical reasoning tests will test a candidate’s logic using forms other than diagrams such as verbal questions that require logic to complete.

What is the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning?

Inductive reasoning is gathering pieces of information to form general conclusion. When applied to psychometric tests, it is when a candidate is able to extract data from multiple sources of provided information and then combine it to form a conclusion that would allow for answering a question.

Deductive reasoning is exactly the opposite of inductive reasoning and is known as “top – down logic”. Deduction means applying general rules to solve specific problems. A candidate that has a good deductive reasoning will be able to use a general rule or a knowledge to answer a specific question.