Analogy Questions

Analogy questions are usually presented as a pair of symbols followed by another as the first symbol in a second pair. You have to find the answer symbol that has the same relationship to this symbol in the same way that the first pair is related. Scan the symbols carefully to observe similarities and differences between them.

You need to look at the elements of the symbols in relation to outlines, shading, line thickness, orientation (i.e. which direction the symbol is ‘pointing’), size, and position in relation to other parts of the main symbol. The number of each of these elements is important too.
In fact, you need to observe all the usual NVR suspects!

Example 1

 

What observations do we notice about these usual suspects in example 1?

1. The 7 sided shape changes to a circle in the second symbol.
2. The half that has a dark grey fill changes to a white filled half in the second symbol.
3. The half that has a white fill changes to a diagonal shaded half in the second symbol.
4. The thickness of the outline line and the centre line remain the same and so can be discounted.

What logical steps can we make when we apply these observations to find the missing symbol?

1. Observation 1 indicates the second symbol of the second pair will be a circle so we can discount answers a and e.
2. Observation 2 indicates that the dark grey fill changes to white so the second symbol must have a left hand half which is white. We can now discount answer b.
3. Observation 3 indicates that the white fill changes to diagonal so the right hand side of the answer symbol must have a diagonal fill.

• Following these observations, answer d is the missing symbol of the second pair.