In easy tasks, the type of information (e.g., numerical values) and the operations needed are apparent and obvious from the way the situation is organized. In more difficult ones, the values must be located or derived from other values; the operations needed may have to be discovered by the performer, depending on his or her interpretation of the context and of the kind of response expected. As well, numeracy situations may involve text to varying degrees, and this text may be of different degrees of importance. There may be a situation where there is little or no text. Some situations may involve pure quantitative information that is to be interpreted or acted upon with virtually no text or linguistic input. In other words, the performer derives all the information needed to respond from the objects present in the situation or from direct numerical displays.

At a higher level, some textual or verbal information may be present alongside the mathematical information. The text can provide background information about the problem situation, or some instructions. For example, a bus schedule, cooking instructions, and a typical school-type word problem all involve some text and some numbers. Still other situations would be heavily text-based or may not involve any numbers or mathematical symbols at all, just plain text. The task will contain mathematical or statistical information that a person needs to understand and, in some cases, act upon, but it will be much less transparent. It may be heavily embedded in dense text or may require using information from a number of sources within or even outside the text/task.

This factor requires that a task will be analyzed in terms of the questions: How difficult is it to identify and decide what action to take?, and How many literacy skills are required?

Plausibility of Distractors. This variable is literacy related, even though it can involve mathematical components. In general, literacy tasks are easiest to process when there are no plausible distractors in the text, that is, there is no other information in the text that meets any of the requirements of the task. At higher levels of difficulty, tasks can involve irrelevant information both within the question as well as within the text. In terms of mathematical information, a low level of plausible distractors would mean that no other mathematical information was present apart from that requested, making the numbers or data required easy to identify. At a higher level, there may be either some other mathematical information in the task (or its text) that could be a distractor, or the mathematical information given or requested could occur in more than one place. A higher level of complexity could also mean that outside information (e.g. the knowledge of a formula) may be needed to answer the question.

This factor requires that a task will be analyzed in terms of the questions: How many other pieces of mathematical information are present?, and Is all the necessary information there?

Complexity of Mathematical Information. Some situations present a person with simple mathematical information, such as concrete objects (to be counted), simple whole numbers, or simple shapes or graphs. At lower skill levels, the information will be more familiar, whereas at higher levels, the information may be less familiar. Situations will be more difficult to manage if they involve more abstract or complex information, such as very large or very small numbers, unfamiliar decimals or percents, information about rates, or dense visual information, as in a diagram or complex table.

This factor requires that a task will be analyzed in terms of the question: How complex is the mathematical information that needs to be manipulated or managed?