Variables
Hold the values, then use them
The harder of the ATSA's two memory games, at both of its published levels. Three variables — A, B and C — are shown one at a time with their values, three seconds each. The values then go and you are asked for each one in turn, in a different order. Basic uses 1, 2 and 3 with no repeats. Advanced runs to 4, lets two variables share a value so nothing can be deduced from the others, and writes one or two of them as sums over another variable — B = A+1 — so you hold what you were given and work the rest out.
Sign in to unlock this test — it's free.
What to expect
- Basic and Advanced, chosen before you start.
- Three variables per round, three seconds each, with a pause between them.
- Basic: values 1-3, never repeated. Advanced: values 1-4, repeats allowed, and sums.
- Ten rounds, thirty answers.
- You type a single digit on the keyboard — there is no on-screen pad, as on the real thing.
What it measures
- Holding several values at once
- Recall in an order you were not given
- Substitution and arithmetic on remembered quantities
Instructions
- 1Memorise all three — you are not told which will be asked first.
- 2The order they are asked in is not the order they were shown in.
- 3On Advanced, a variable written as a sum always hangs off one that is a plain number, so there is never a chain to unpick.
- 4The real ATSA gives no feedback until the end — this one shows the working after every answer.
Tips
- Rehearse the pair aloud as it appears; the three-second window is for encoding it, not for reading it.
- On Advanced, resolve the sum while it is still on screen rather than storing the expression and doing the arithmetic later — a remembered number survives better than a remembered formula.
- Values, not letters, are what you need at the end.
Variables
You are given values to hold, then asked to work with them rather than read them back. This is working memory with an operation on top.
You are told A = 6, B = 4 and C = 9. What is (C − B) × A?