Decision Making

Strategies - Decision Making

The Decision Making section is used to assess your ability to apply logic to arrive at a conclusion or decision, analyse data based information, and evaluate arguments.

Brief

1. Take your time to UNDERSTAND the question

If you know solving the question will take too long, select a feasible answer and move on

2. Make use of your whiteboard

Writing the key elements of the scenario will help you establish logic and reason and will tend to get more done in less time

3. If in doubt, GUESS

As a general principle, drawing diagrams can be helpful. If for example, the question has a number of people in it, write their names down on your whiteboard (or just the first initial to save space and time). If the question talks about compass directions, draw a simple map. If it talks about categories, a Venn diagram can help. If it involves a timetable or timed events, draw out a timeline to simplify your thought process. By using visual tools to complement the words, you make it easier to understand and solve the problem.

1. Logical Puzzles’ type questions

Order of information: Before answering the question, place facts in order by starting off with known facts. Build on these as you read through more of the information.
Write it out: Often writing or drawing information in a grid, graph, table or diagram will help organise or visualise the information.
Only do what you need: When completing a question such as a puzzle, only complete the working out that you’ll need to answer the question. You don’t want to be wasting time on working out more than is asked.
Eliminate, eliminate, eliminate!: While solving problems, eliminate answers that cannot be true.
MUST VS. MIGHT: Be aware of wording in the questions, for example, look out for tricks with words such as ‘must’ and ‘might’.

2. ‘Syllogism’ type questions

Read with care: Read over the provided information carefully and read over it more than once.
Work backwards: Go through each of the conclusions and determine whether they follow from the provided information.
Do not assume: Even though you might be an expert and have additional knowledge or external bias on a certain subject matter that they include in the stimulus, never ever use that information to solve UCAT questions. In addition, these questions may sometimes use words that are made up but it shouldn’t prevent you from answering the question. Don’t be put off!
Look out for words: Only consider the provided information and watch for qualifying words, for example, ‘all’, ‘only’, ‘some; and ‘none’.
Diagrams may help: Using Venn diagrams may help to answer the questions successfully.

3. ‘Interpreting information/Inference’ type questions

Focus on the facts you find: You may be presented with graphs and charts that appear to contain a lot of information but don’t let it overwhelm you. Only focus on the information you’re able to interpret from the statements, especially if you can’t understand everything presented. You should ensure you’re not using prior knowledge of information and you may need to apply reasoning skills to work out answers.
Round off numbers: On some occasions, simply rounding off numbers in some questions will help you answer questions quickly.
Look at the question before digesting the data: Once you understand the premise of the question, you can approach the data in a much more focused way to gather the information you need and ignore the distracters designed to make the question more difficult
Tables
1. Read any rubric or instructions
2. Look at the Headings
3. Look at the Units
4. Look at the data - are there any obvious patterns?
Graph
1. Read any rubric or instructions
2. Look at the Axes
3. Look at the Units
4. Look at the plot - are there any obvious trends??

4. ‘Recognising information/Strongest argument’ type questions

Select the strongest argument: Step aside from your own beliefs or any prior knowledge as it is not required to answer the questions.
Eliminate assumptions: Cross off any assumptions and focus only on statements or facts. Since this is an elimination-based strategy question, you can stop as soon as you find an answer choice that matches the original term accurately. Only check the remainder if you are not completely confident with your choice.
FREES. Many of these questions will ask you to select the strongest argument for or against a statement. To help you select the best option, use the acronym FREES.
1. Factual - the argument should be based on fact rather than opinion
2. Relevant - the argument should directly address the statement in the question
3. Entire - the argument should address the whole question, not only one aspect of it
4. Emotionless - the argument should avoid emotional pleas and derive strength from relevant evidence
5. Sensible - the argument should be a generally sensible and reasonable approach to take

5. ‘Venn diagrams’ type questions

Refresh your maths skills: You’ll need to brush up on your Venn diagram skills that you would have learned in Maths. Most usually have numbers that you need to add up for figures that overlap to answer the question
Read carefully: Ensure that you read through the information carefully and multiple times to help you with the questions. It’ll help when you may need to draw up a Venn diagram. There are questions that may not contain numbers. There may be times where there is overlap, partially or not at all. So, get used to drawing these diagrams.
Elimination can save you time: It’s helpful to eliminate the responses that do not or cannot be representing the provided information.
Don’t go overboard: Only solve what you need – try to only do working required for the answer you need. Sometimes, an answer can be reached using just some and not all of the information in the stimulus. Try and think in terms of shapes instead of words.

6. ‘Probability’ type questions

Be careful of a twist: this could involve an incorrect deduction about the possibility of an outcome. the question may describe a few independent events, with one or more events that have already occurred, hence cannot be a part of the probability calculation since it has already occurred and the result is known.
Know when to covert: There may be success/failure rates. So, be clear that you are comparing the same kind – this may involve correcting the same comparison rates.
You may be presented with probabilistic information in a variety of forms - fractions, decimals, percentages or odds - so do remind yourself of these
A good rule of thumb with probability is this.
1. If you are asked the probability of something or something occurring, then the overall probability is higher than only one of them occurring so you add the probabilities.
2. If you are asked the probability of something and something occurring, then the overall probability is lower than only one of them occurring, so you multiply the probabilities.
3. If you are ever confused about probability, draw out a probability tree. The visualisation will enable you to sec through the complexity to identify the correct calculation.

General Tips

Timing: Time given to complete this section is limited so it’s important to keep track of your time spent on each question – flag questions that you’re unsure about and then return to them at the end; decide whether you'll be answering these the best you can or leave these to come back later. You don’t want to waste a lot of time on one question only to be unable to complete latter questions that you may answer correctly.
Write out or draw information: Use your booklet and pen to help you work out any questions. Sometimes it may help to visualise information in a graph, table or diagram. Or, you may need to make some calculations.
Practice question type online: Some questions in this section will require you to drag and drop responses. Practice these question response types with online practice tests.
Polish up on your maths skills: Some questions will require you to apply maths skills when interpreting probability questions or Venn diagrams.