The fact that Labour have a "massive" parliamentary majority but based on a little over ⅓rd of the votes is down to #FPTP and the two old elitist parties being prepared to "take turns" as long as it keeps the riff-raff parties out of power
I am worried that our "sovereign" parliament is so weak
There needs to be some means (without resorting to state propaganda) to allow a government (usually "not right-wing") to put its message across without being unfairly(?) monstered by oligarchical press barons
Reformulating Cummings theory of how government works and toning down the HR filter strikes me as lacking insight. Those who have the ear of prime ministers have limited understanding of how transformative technology impacts individuals.
It is extremely not hard. An interview for a junior quant position in a hedge-fund would have more difficult questions. When I was at PwC we had more difficult questions (mostly doable by the candidates, though not always doable by the senior managers doing the interviews).
That is nice. The other thing is that many problems are Wicked if you think of them top-down. If you think of them like ecosystems they look like adaption processes rather than Problems to be Solved.
The bridge analogy for the slightly messy problem is an easily understandable one in that Glasgow and Renfrew have just been connected by bridge for the first time. Benefits for the wider community but higher traffic locally and loss of jobs at the very old Renfrew Ferry foot passenger service.
And another interesting question - are the people who can quickly solve the well-defined problems actually the best to be devising interventions for the messy problems? ...
No. There’s still the need for puzzle solvers but their work needs to sit within a problem structuring context. Starting from a puzzle-solving perspective is damaging - for all of us. See preface (free) from my book
I do not think smart is an existing real thing. Different people will perform well in different circumstances. I guess people good at solving geometry puzzles will mainly be good at solving geometry puzzles but plausible also better than average in some related tasls
I don’t understand how this would qualify anyone for anything more than ordering tiles for a renovation project. There is a big one planned for Westminster Palace…
Looks similar to GCSE/A level maths problems I vaguely remember from my fairly average comprehensive.
Work out areas of triangles.
You have to view it as a big triangle minus a quite-big triangle, minus a small triangle, minus a rectangle. You can work out the area of each of those from the information given (and it gives a nice round answer). Not sure how it relates to technical knowledge, though - it's all a bit Bletchley.
After faffing for a bit I went with short side as the base of a triangle to apply area = 1/2*base*perp.height.
Then turns out perp.height is just the diagonal of the middle square, and the top square is irrelevant?
Could definitely have been a tricksy-ish question on my 1985 maths O level...
I’m not a huge fan of these sorts of things, mostly because the general grasp of logic is so slim that far too many people will form the incorrect conclusion that “not being able to solve it means you’re not super smart” when the reason may actually be unfamiliarity with Euclidean geometry.
I can see to go about it. Pythag theorem… conjecture some shapes that are not marked but which are implicit… equations to reduce etc. My schools days are 40 years in my past and maths was never my forte, so I can’t do all this. But I sense that anyone good at GCSE level maths ought to be able to.
That was my general direction of thought - fill in all the rectangles, then work out which ones you need to cut in half to subtract from the 6pi minus root 5 by 6pi plus 3root 5 right angle triangle. Not so much “super smart” as good with shapes.
I can solve the problem. Work out the length of each of the sides of the squares, then use those & Pythagoras to work out the length of each side.
Then apply Heron's formula.
It's too sodding tedious to work it all through.
As a mathematician who enjoys recreational geometry, I can do it in my head in thirty seconds, but I doubt I'm any better suited than you to be a "Whitehall disrupter". Although I could shout "What's even the point of you knock-off Tories!" quite loudly, so there's that.
Oh I got one free read but I can't go back and read it again. It's one big RA triangle minus 2 triangles and a rectangle. You can work out the lengths because you know the size of each square, assuming I interpreted I correctly.
It is, i would suggest, relatively straight forward if you did well at gcse maths, given it can be answered by primarily knowing what the area of a right angled triangle and a rectangle are.
Yeah it’s not that difficult, just construct right angled triangles where the hypotenuse is one of the two long red lines, the final line length that’s smallest is 10
DSIT just also announced a cyber expert committee where half of them are frauds , total frauds from Twitter. One spends every 30 minutes posting and another is a customer service rep who moonlights running a sponsored podcast so isn’t independent. So we are getting no innovation. Just lobbying
Thanks. So, there's no particularly clever trick here: it's more like a test of whether the would-be answerer knows Cartesian geometry. You just write down the coordinates for every point involved and you get the answer.
Yes, that's how it seems to me. It's not one for lateral thinking, but more of knowledge and application of knowledge.
I haven't tried, but even with my maths O-level from 1977, I reckon I could work it out. I can at least see roughly how it should be done.
In two senses I think: first, that it's testing only knowledge and a not very complicated application of that knowledge, and, second, the knowledge itself doesn't seem to be of a particularly high level.
Very well said. If Downing St. thinks it needs more Cartesian thinkers to make Bayesian predictions about complex adaptive systems we are truly lost🤦🏻♀️ I’d take anonymous civil service caution & slowness over tech STEM bombast every day of the week.
So the trick involves noticing that one of the sides of the triangle is a diagonal of a square, and this allows you to define a construction for the base and height of the triangle, like this:
It’s quite trivial. No pythagoras or Cartesian coordinates needed.
Move top apex to bottom right of big square, and area stays the same (why?). Now move bottom apex to bottom right of middle square, and area still stays the same. But you’ve ended up with triangle half the middle square so area 10.
Kind of sums up how stuck Westminster is that they believe knowing how to use methods developed over 2000 years ago is the new way to find original thinkers.
Here you go.
Your analysis absolutely nails it.
There is an insight which makes it blindingly simple, but you won't believe the amount of brute force and √π that I applied before I saw it.
I can’t do maths, and have no idea how to find the measurements but isn’t it just the area of the ‘missing rectangle’ bottom left, elongated? *ducks & prepares for onslaught of ‘actually you’re wrong because….’*
It's not even a difficult one. Needs nothing more that GCSE level maths. A quick bit of pythag to get two of the sides. Then arctan to get an angle. Then area = ½a.b.sin(C) and you're done.
I think the big problem with the puzzle is any sensible maths brain looks at it and says "I could spend 20 minutes arsing around with congruent triangles, but you've specified the coordinates of all the corners, so I can just brute force it with Heron's formula"
The length of the sides is easy (which is why it's amenable to Heron's formula). But (SPOILER) the area appears to be 20, so there's presumably some kind of trick where you prove that it's equal to the middle square or four times the smallest square
Basically for all that they say they want original innovative thinkers, all a puzzle like this filters for is "Have you done lots of geometry puzzles before?"
More worryingly it's a test of mathematical knowledge, but maths is useless without subject matter expertise. They should be hiring those people and providing them with calculators.
Yeah, if they seriously did mean for people to solve this trigonometrically (and after a lot of thought I still don't see a Euclidean solution*, so I guess they must have), you're really selecting for maths teachers and people who build their own furniture.
If you list German GCSE as a requirement for a job, you’re liable to get people with much better German applying. People are massively overinterpreting this test.
It is, and the article notes that he’s been quick to claim that he was right all along. But why pass up the opportunity to pluck an idea from the baggage carousel of public policy, particularly if you throw a bit of science in there?
We're in for a good four years of zero interesting ideas here, aren't we. As someone instinctively fine with technocracy, turns out I'm only okay with it when it transparently supports an actual set of values and goals, and not whatever this is. Deep sigh.
(Apologies to @columnist.bsky.social for ignoring the question about what looks like a geometry problem that I'm sure people trained in certain things (as opposed to innovative radicals) can do as well as geniuses or whatever, but that I as a legal academic just don't feel I need to deal with!)
It’s a test thought up by someone who doesn’t understand disruption. That’s stuff was okay for a coder 25 years ago but Complexity has rendered that approach pointless.
It's quite elegant. It's the sort of thing you set for a precocious child with the hint that there's a simple solution. Can you look at a problem in a number of different ways until you find a perspective that gives some clarity?
It’s not a very challenging problem, every side of the triangle is the hypotenuse of a right sided triangle whose length you can trivially work out. Then just apply Heron’s formula. Would be a v straight forward a level problem imo.
Yeah, this is not a test of creative thinking or problem solving ability, it's asking the question "did you do well at GCSE maths"? which is meant to be something we have certificates for
Agree it’s not a test of creative thinking but you can’t actually assume that just because people have a maths degree that they can usefully do maths - have to test. Have interviewed many PhD statisticians who stumbled over quite simple problems in statistics.
If you want a hiring process that selects for competent people that are broadly stem aligned you do just have to ask lots of broadly stem aligned questions like this and good candidates will get a big chunk of them right.
the one passage in a heinlein book that i still recall is when the hero aces an intelligence test (dropping a marble into a bottle with eyes closed?) by CHEATING (they took the ppl who kept their eyes open)
at the time i thought this very wise & amusing (i was perhaps 12)
For example clearly the leftmost edge is the hypotenuse of a rectangle with sides 6sqrt(pi)+2srqt(5) and 6sqrt(pi) - 2sqrt(5). Kind of problem that looks much harder than it is. The key part is the text that tells you everything is a square.
Also: I can solve that puzzle [in two different ways even - there might be a third]. And I can say with quite a bit of confidence that I am not the kind of person they seem to have in mind.
It should be a two parter: 1. Solve the puzzle (or at least provide a credible method, if maths is a bit rusty) and 2. Explain what can be done with that knowledge. Leadership tasks for the armed forces don't require the task to be completed... the way the task is undertaken is what is assessed.
Comments
The Observer reported [Very minimally] that Starmer told Foreign Office staff who disagreed with Gaza policy to resign.
He boasts of being friends with Trump.
WTF is happenign to the Labour party and the country as a whole?
Labour have (reluctantly?) learnt that to win, you have to campaign "a little bit Right Wing" and then govern "more Right Wing"
The alternative is to be crucified by the oligarch owned media - an unaddressed but urgent issue
So what do you suggest:: All parties shift right?
Or just give up?
I am worried that our "sovereign" parliament is so weak
Press barons spout bias & the #BBC amplify it!
#news #itvnews #c4news #skynews #bbcnews
Innovation at govt level requires qual and quant.
https://bsky.app/profile/mikeyearworth.bsky.social/post/3ls3yql4if22y
This also relates to why I think the current approach to AGI is not going to work.
https://www.grounded.systems/2024/03/problem-structuring-methodology-in-practice/
https://no10innovationfellows.campaign.gov.uk/
Looks similar to GCSE/A level maths problems I vaguely remember from my fairly average comprehensive.
Work out areas of triangles.
Then turns out perp.height is just the diagonal of the middle square, and the top square is irrelevant?
Could definitely have been a tricksy-ish question on my 1985 maths O level...
You calculate the lengths of two of the diagonals, then do one multiplication.
It's the area of two trapezoids minus a third trapezoid with known sides and height from the squares.
You don't need all the sides.
Then apply Heron's formula.
It's too sodding tedious to work it all through.
And indeed @gro-tsen.bsky.social
https://archive.ph/hnLSr
I haven't tried, but even with my maths O-level from 1977, I reckon I could work it out. I can at least see roughly how it should be done.
I only did O Level maths, tbf.
Move top apex to bottom right of big square, and area stays the same (why?). Now move bottom apex to bottom right of middle square, and area still stays the same. But you’ve ended up with triangle half the middle square so area 10.
Doubtless someone who’s worked on the LHC at CERN has a specific proven track record however it’s unclear how they’d fix HS2, NHS etc
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/jun/16/the-genius-myth-by-helen-lewis-review-bright-wrong-things
Turn the diagram 45° anticlockwise.
The shortest side is your base.
The top of the triangle is at the same hight as the middle square top corner.
Area of a triangle is half base times height.
Use pythag to work out diagonals of the squares. (√10 and √40)
(√10*√40)/2 =10
I suspect the person who set it thinks there's a correlation to finding the easy method to some valuable personality trait.
My personal view is once you've experienced enough of these types...
Great experience for writing a book of brain teasers but probably not running a country.
1) It's GCSE level just with more steps
2) There's an incredibly simple, elegant answer that only in hindsight is obvious.
Your analysis absolutely nails it.
There is an insight which makes it blindingly simple, but you won't believe the amount of brute force and √π that I applied before I saw it.
The base is easy and the height is easier than it looks.
If @catrionaagg.bsky.social had set this, the answer would somehow come out as a nice round number!
The shortest side is the base so √10
The height is the diagonal of the middle square √40
So (√10 * √40)/2
= 10
(I think 🤔)
learning
experience
thinking
things the smart young lobbyists and Spads lack?
Everything shite is new again.
at the time i thought this very wise & amusing (i was perhaps 12)