[handoflixue]

In my experience, it was common to test speed - my favorite was solving 100 arithmetic problems in, I think it was 3 minutes? Perhaps shorter. The point was that it was basically impossible to solve them all, so it evaluated both your speed and your self-assessment: if you move too quickly, you'll make errors. If you spend too much time second-guessing yourself, you won't get enough problems finished.

It always struck me as an ingenious way to get a feel for a new group of students, since it's quick to administer and equally quick to grade, while revealing quite a lot of information.

Certainly we hold speed to some regard, since a lot of academic accommodations involve granting extra time. If we aren't testing on speed, then surely we should give that to anyone that asks?