NUMBER ANALOGIES

First, a teaser:

Right off the bat I can tell that the answer is 360.
Another one:

Without blinking an eye, I can tell that the answer is 9.

For me these types of questions are like bonus items. Usually they can be solved within
a few seconds and with little to no calculation involved.
What’s the trick? It’s not just a trick, in my opinion, as numbers behave rather well
(logically) and lend themselves to fewer exceptions as compared to, say, language
concepts. The key word is pattern recognition.
By now you would have probably figured out how I claim to be able to solve these
number analogies lightning-fast. As I’ve pointed out in my FB post, a solid grounding on
the basics can help tremendously in spotting familiar patterns in math problems such as
these. Furthermore, once you’ve seen a lot of similar problems previously the answers
will then seem to come naturally to you. That’s your intuition in action.
Now let’s try something a little bit more complicated:

Okay, you might claim I am cheating as the answer is already indicated in the picture. I
purposely included the choices to show how you can use them to your advantage
especially for exams like the CSE, where your next biggest enemy is time trouble.
At this point I must mention that these number analogies can be solved using the ratio
and proportion method, which is the most reliable and foolproof method I know of. If you
don’t have any problem with dealing with fractions in equations, then you should go for
that method.
I’m a lazy person though, so I tend to find shortcuts for solving simple math problems
instead of doing it “by the book”. Amazingly, the technique I am going to show you has
worked for me every time and I can confidently say that once you get the hang of it, you
will never look at number analogy problems the same way again.
I can hear you say “enough talking” by now so here we go:
First, let’s break down the question into its “elements” first, otherwise my line of
reasoning won’t make much sense.
Number analogy items have two pairs; in our example,
75% is to ½ is the first pair [like an (x, y) pair where x=75% and y= ½]
45% is to x is the second pair [let’s use the variable x for the unknown]
Usually, the way these items are constructed is such that the value of the second
element in each pair is dependent on what operation is being done to the first element.
In our example the value ½ and x are the result of an operation done on the first
elements 75% and 45%, respectively.
Next, it is useful to think of the second pair as a “mirror” of the first pair. Whatever
operation was done to the first pair is mirrored by the second pair; otherwise, they will
not be in proportion to each other.
In our example, whatever we did to 75% to get the value ½ is exactly what should be
done to 45% to get the value of x.
Are you with me yet? You see, number analogies can be solved by applying logic and
using a bit of analysis and maybe some calculation to make sure everything is in order.
If you adopt this method of thinking and practice it a lot, the patterns I was talking about
earlier will appear right before your eyes whenever you run into these types of
questions.
Let’s continue with the analysis.
The next thing I notice is that 75% is greater than 45%:
75% > 45%
And so logically ½ should be higher than whatever the value of x is. Restating this, we
can infer that the value of x should be lower or cannot be higher than ½. Now looking at
the choices, we can apply this line of reasoning to eliminate the ones that do not follow
the above observation.
3/5 = 60% which is higher than 50% (½ = 50%, remember?) so eliminate this
 2/3  66.67% so this one’s also eliminated
¾ = 75% so this one too is eliminated from the choices
That leaves us with only two choices: 3/10 and 3/11. How do you know quickly that
these two are smaller than ½? Half of 10 is 5 and 3<5 so 3/10<5/10 (which is equivalent
to ½) and same thing for 3/11.
These techniques of comparison and subsequent elimination greatly help increase
your chance of getting the correct answer. They are most useful when you have little
time left and are willing to take your chances given that the probability of guessing the
correct answer is now 1 out of 2 or 20%!
So which of the two remaining choices is correct? If I were to just guess, I’d bet on 3/10
in a heartbeat. My reasoning is this: if I double 75 (disregarding the % sign) that’s 150
and since the value of the 2nd element always depends on what was done to the first,
we double ½ too and get 1:

𝟏
𝟕𝟓(𝟐) ∶ (𝟐)
𝟐

𝟏𝟓𝟎 ∶ 𝟏
We can do the same for the 2nd pair and get
𝟒𝟓(𝟐) ∶ 𝒙(𝟐)
𝟗𝟎 ∶ 𝟐𝒙
Now both 150 and 90 are divisible by 10 but not divisible by 11 (these are the
denominators of 3/10 and 3/11, respectively) so 3/10 gets my vote.
On a side note, notice that you can actually transform the original given ratio
𝟏
𝟕𝟓 ∶ ∶ 𝟒𝟓 ∶ 𝒙
𝟐

to
𝟏𝟓𝟎 ∶ 𝟏 ∶ 𝟗𝟎 ∶ 𝟐𝒙
and solve for x more easily since you don’t have to deal with a fraction anymore:
x=90/300 or 3/10
At this point it should be mentioned that if you wanted to solve for the unknown number
using ratio and proportion methods, you should notice that 75% is expressed in percent
and ½ is expressed as a fraction. To be able to find out how the relationship between
the two items was brought about you need to express them in similar terms. Either
express 75% as a fraction or convert ½ into percent. Same goes for the second pair
45% and x.
Expressing x as a percent though seems odd so we convert the first elements in both
pairs as fractions instead: 75% is equivalent to 75/100 and 45% is equivalent to 45/100
(you should already know how this is done). Notice that we can simplify these fractions
further: 75/100 = ¾ and 45/100 = 9/20.
So how did 75% or ¾ become ½ in the first pair?
I can see you frowning by now. If you know your fractions well, you will be able to figure
out that ¾ is (½ + ¼):

¼ ¼ ¼

1/2
The shaded part is 2/3 of the whole figure.
𝟑 𝟐 𝟏
× =
𝟒 𝟑 𝟐
Carrying this operation over to the second pair, we get:

𝟗 𝟐 𝟑
× =
𝟐𝟎 𝟑 𝟏𝟎

Now let’s go back to the first example:

The first elements in both pairs, 6 and 12, should alert you that there is a pattern
(6x2=12). This pattern carries on to the second elements so 180x2=360. You can verify
this yourself.
Same goes for the second example, but with a little variation:

I know that 35 is a multiple of 7 so this gives me an idea that 45 in the second pair must
be a multiple of the unknown number, which can only be either 5 or 9. Seeing that 0.45
is greater than 0.35,
0.35<0.45
the correct choice must be 9, which is greater than 7.
0.35:7<0.45:9
Now try it yourself:

Good luck!