Sample Questions
See how the olympiad thinks.
Every question sits inside a real situation. There is nothing to recall — only something to work out. Expand each question to read the reasoning behind the answer.
A message forwarded in a family group says: 'Scientists have confirmed that drinking hot water every morning cures all types of fever. Please forward to 10 people.'
Q1. What is the strongest reason to doubt this message?
- A.It is written in a group chat rather than a newspaper
- B.It names no scientist, no study and no place where the claim was published
- C.Hot water tastes unpleasant in summer
- D.It asks people to forward it
A website reviewing school bags gives the highest rating to one brand. At the bottom of the page, in small text: 'This review is sponsored by the brand featured.'
Q2. How should a reader treat this review?
- A.Accept it, because the reviewer tested the bag
- B.Reject everything on the website permanently
- C.Treat the rating as advertising and look for an independent comparison before deciding
- D.Buy the second-ranked bag instead
Two credible reports on air quality in a city disagree. Report A says pollution fell 12% last year and cites government monitoring stations. Report B says pollution rose 9% and cites a university's own sensor network placed near busy roads.
Q3. What is the most reasonable conclusion?
- A.Report A is right because government data is official
- B.Report B is right because universities are neutral
- C.Both may be accurate for what they measured; the difference likely comes from where the sensors are placed
- D.Neither report can be trusted
A student asks an AI assistant for research on teenage sleep. The answer is fluent and cites 'Sharma et al., Journal of Adolescent Health, 2019'. The student searches for that paper and cannot find it anywhere.
Q4. What is the correct next step?
- A.Use the citation anyway, since the assistant sounded confident
- B.Treat the citation as unverified, remove it, and find a real source that can be located
- C.Change the year to 2020 and cite it
- D.Conclude that no research exists on teenage sleep
A chart headlined 'Crime doubles in the city!' shows a bar rising steeply. Reading the axis, the values go from 1.0 to 1.1 per thousand people, and the vertical axis begins at 0.98.
Q5. What is misleading about this chart?
- A.The colours are too bright
- B.A truncated axis makes a 10% change look like a doubling
- C.Crime should never be shown as a bar chart
- D.The chart has no title
A student wants to know whether their town's public library is open on Sundays.
Q6. Which is the most reliable place to look first?
- A.A three-year-old blog post about the library
- B.The library's own official page or a phone call to the library
- C.A general question posted in a social media group
- D.An AI assistant with no internet access
Ready to think it through?
The olympiad has 40 to 50 questions of this kind, depending on category. Nothing to memorise — only something to reason about.