Guy's intention with a preliminary assessment was to understand the breadth of his student's basics. Without a standardised curriculum for education, Guy needed to understand how much Jean and Marie knew already, and to what extent their prowess was in those topics. While Guy didn't mind teaching them only on an individual basis, the strategy wasn't scalable. As his class strength increased it would be more efficient to first establish a baseline as a starting point and then build up from there.
"The first topic I want to test everyone on is Mathematics. I am sure that both of you must have already covered basic arithmetics. I want to know how far your knowledge extends beyond that. Attempt as many questions as you can. The questions grow increasingly harder as you progress, so stop if you can't go any further," Guy instructed.
