What the MAT Analogies will look like is described here-
Language and Vocabulary - These analogy items include aspects of English grammar and usage to test your understanding of word meanings and your ability to recognize the relationships between those meanings. Language analogy items most often use one of three relationships: synonym (words with similar meanings), antonym (words with opposite meanings), or intensity (words with the samegeneral meaning but with a difference in degree).
NAIVE : (a. cosmopolitan, b. credulous, c. experienced, d. pretentious):: SOPHISTICATED : WORLDLY
This analogy requires the recognition that sophisticated and worldly have similar meanings and form a complete pair. The correct answer will then be a synonym for naive. Thus, the correct answer is credulous. This item can also be interpreted as an antonym analogy by interchanging the middle terms: naive is an antonym for sophisticated, worldly is an antonym for credulous.
ANNOY : ENRAGE :: ENLARGE : (a. increase, b. exaggerate, c. augment, d. reduce)
This analogy involves degrees of meaning: to enrage is to annoy to a greater degree. The correct answer should then be the word that means to enlarge, but to a greater degree. Thus, the correct answer is “b. exaggerate.” This is an example of an item that requires you to distinguish fine shades of meaning between terms. If you incorrectly consider annoy and enrage to be synonyms, then you would have to choose between “a. increase,” “b. exaggerate,” or “c. augment” for an answer, all of which are generally related to enlarge. However, to choose between these three options, you need to see that the difference between them is the same as the difference between annoy and enrage-a difference in degree.
Humanities - MAT analogy items involving content form the humanities include literature, philosophy, and the fine arts. Literature items may test your knowledge of authors, their works, literary genres, or literary devices. Philosophy items are concerned with philosophers, their works, and their beliefs or schools of thought. Fine arts analogy items cover the entire spectrum of the fine arts: the performing arts of music, drama, and dance; the visual arts of painting and sculpting; and other arts such as filmmaking and sound recording. These items use a variety of relationships. Two common ones are creator/creation (such as an author and the title of a work) and whole/part (such as a portion of a certain genre).
FROST : POETRY :: MILLER : (a. grain, b. drama, c. literature, d. bard)
Looking at the three given terms in this literary analogy there is a creator/creation relationship between Frost and Poetry: Robert Frost is best known for his poetry. For this reason, the correct answer should be the type of literature that the American playwright Arthur Miller is best known for creating-“b. drama.”
POEM : (a. line, b. rhyme, c. stanza, d. sonnet) :: BOOK : CHAPTER
In this analogy, the last two of the three given terms have a whole/part relationship to each other. A section of a book is a chapter. The missing term, then, should be a section of a poem. The correct answer is “c. stanza.” Even though a line (option b) is also part of a poem, it is not a complete section in the same way that a chapter is a complete section of a book.
Social Sciences - MAT analogy items with content from the social sciences include subject matter from history, geography, political science, economics, sociology, and psychology. Analogy items with content from the social sciences may use many different types of relationships. For example, a historical event may be paired with the year it occurred, a key person associated with the event, the country in which it occurred, a piece of legislation associated with the event, or a cause or result of the event.
INDEPENDENCE : 1776 :: EMANCIPATION : (a. 1783, b. 1863, c. 1876, d. 1920)
In this analogy, the relationship between the first two given terms is event/date. You need to supply implied words in order for the relationship to become obvious. The Declaration of Independence was issued in 1776, whereby the American colonies declared their independence from Great Britain. The missing term should then be the year that the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, whereby slaves were declared free in the states still at war with the federal government. The correct answer is “b. 1863.”
STRIKE : (a. customer, b. employer, c. picket, d. union) :: BOYCOTT : MERCHANT
The agent/object relationship between the terms may not be immediately obvious until the given terms are considered in an economic sense. Then it is seen that a boycott is a protest action taken against a merchant in the form of abstaining from buying or using. Similarly, a strike is a protest in the form of work stoppage directed against an employer (option b).
Natural Sciences - Both the biological and physical sciences provide subject matter for MAT analogy items. Some commonly used relationships in such items include agent/object (such as FLOWER : BLOOM) and category (such as HYDROGEN : ELEMENT).
CARNIVORE : HERBIVORE :: TIGER : (a. antelope, b. lion, c. predator, d. vegetation)
A tiger is an example of a carnivore-a meat-eating animal. The missing term should be an example of a herbivore-an animal that eats only plants. Thus, the correct answer is “a. antelope.”
LIMESTONE : (a. cement, b. metamorphic, c. sedimentary, d. volcano) :: GRANITE : IGNEOUS
The last two given terms have a member/group relationship. Granite is an example of igneous rock. Limestone is an example of sedimentary (option c) rock.
Mathematics - Mathematics analogies may include concepts from number theory, arithmetic, algebra, or geometry. Mathematics analogy items may use numbers, words, symbols, or combinations of these. Mathematics items often employ transformation, order, or object/characteristic relationships. In solving mathematics analogies, you must recognize the conceptual relationship between two of the three given terms. For some of these items, you may also have to use computation to determine the value of the missing term.
(a. radius, b. diameter, c. area, d. circumference) : PERIMETER :: CIRCLE : SQUARE
Examining the three given terms, you may recognize that a perimeter is the distance around a square. You can then also recognize that the distance around a circle is “d. circumference.”
4 : 64 :: 5 : (a. 8, b. 25, c. 32, d. 125)
You might suppose that a possible relationship between the first two given numbers is that an implied 16 multiplied by 4 equals 64. However, this cannot be the relationship, since 16 multiplied by 5 equals 80, which is not one of the answer choices. The relationship here is that 4 cubed equals 64. Since 5 cubed equals 125, the correct answer is d.
