flynn012

Analogies are the tiniest components of thoughts and communications. Constructing good analogies is a skill. Seeing the logic in partial analogies presented to you (i.e., where a term is missing) builds your associative intelligence, pattern recognition skills, cause and effect reasoning and your verbal acuity. Analogies are mental muscle builders. Here are several simple ones to give you a small jolt of electromagnetic and biochemical stimulation today. Enjoy them! Fill in each blank with the best possible answer . 1. Century is to __________ as dollar is to dime. 2. __________ is to bottom as up is to down. 3.Hawk is to _____________ as war is to peace. 4. Cat is to kitten as lion is to ______________. 5. Tree is to forest as star is to _____________. 6. _____________ is to stage as chemist is to laboratory. 7. Inventor is to Edison as _________________ is to Columbus. 8. China is to __________ as Canada is to North America. 9. __________ is to moon as day is to night. 10. Hand is ...

In my last post, I made some observations about the nature of intelligence, plasticity, cognition , learning and cognitive enhancement . Toward the end of that post, I left you with a group of simple (what a subjective term that is!) sequences to complete. Here they are again, with the next number (found through pattern recognition ) placed there for you in red . A) 1, 3, 6, 10, 15, ?  21 B) 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ?  21 C) 1000, 0100, 0010, 0001, 1000 ? 0100 D) 1, 4, 9, 16, 25 ? 36 E) 200, 3000, 40000, 500000, ? 6000000 F) 1, 100, 2, 99, 3, 98, 4, ? 97 G) 1.21, 2.32, 3.43, 4.54, ? 5.65 --------------------- I'll let you ponder on those answers for a day or so. If you can't figure out how we arrived at them, don't fret. Some were tough. And I will show you the pattern underlying each of these sequences of numbers. Observation : In verbal communications, we read between the lines. In numeric or alphanumeric pattern recognition, we must read between the items that comprise t...

Your mental capacity , plasticity, memory, recall and deductive reasoning are all dramatically enhanced by your ability to recognize patterns and to extrapolate (or generalize) from them. In some cerebral circles, the NICs ( nerds-in-charge ) refer to this phenomenon as "learning a rule." This notion has great applicability in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) , but it is the shining key to a means of improving our own intelligence as well as increasing the actual speed of thought . Imagine being able to think faster because you are able to make 'connections' more rapidly? This skill is valuable to cultivate. Not surprisingly, it is a skill that can be improved by simple exercise. Pattern recognition skills are involved in every aspect of gaming, athletics, problem-solving and life.  The more different (and complex) patterns that we are able to recognize from prior exposure, the easier and faster it will be for us to recognize new patterns. By the way, s...