Guessing/not guessing?

[siredward20]

I was told a while back that there are some tests that you want to guess on if you dont know the answer, and some tests you dont want to guess on - based on how the test is graded. For example: the freshman college comp says you dont get graded for wrong answers, only for correct answers, so that would mean I would want to guess even if I dont know the answer?

[rick471]

My understanding is all CLEP and DSST tests do NOT penalize you for a wrong answer. So guessing is always better than not guessing.

[snazzlefrag]

My understanding is all CLEP and DSST tests do NOT penalize you for a wrong answer. So guessing is always better than not guessing.

ABSOLUTELY!

You will not lose any points for guessing on any of the CLEP, DANTES, ECE, and TECEP exams. The only sure-fire way to lose a point is to not enter any answer at all.

When in doubt GUESS!!!

Guessing on a 4-answer standardized exam gives you a 25% probability of guessing correctly. If you guess on 20 questions, you are statistically likely to get five of them correct. The odds are slightly less on a 5-answer exam, but still VERY MUCH in our favor.

A good strategy is to:

1) Go through all the exam questions first, answering only those for which you are certain of the answer. Mark any questions that you skipped.

2) Go back through a second time and spend some time narrowing down your options and answering as many of the previously marked questions as possible. Once again, skip any questions that make your eyeballs bleed.

3) Finally, as time begins to wind down, go through the entire test one last time and randomly GUESS on any remaining questions. You should not be left with ANY unanswered questions by the time your exam is over.

Hope that helps,
Snazzlefrag

[GettinMyBA]

Guessing on a 4-answer standardized exam gives you a 25% probability of guessing correctly. If you guess on 20 questions, you are statistically likely to get five of them correct. The odds are slightly less on a 5-answer exam, but still VERY MUCH in our favor.

One more point to add to Snazzlefrag's excellent answer... this is partially scientific and partially my personal observation:

When you cannot even narrow down at all, or if you are blindly guessing because time is about to run out on the test... when it's truly a guess, Rob mentioned that you will get the answer 25% of the time... true, but only if you guess all the same answer (Make ALL your guesses be A, or make ALL your guesses B, etc.). A mathemetician taught me that... he said that you don't get your full 25% chance unless you make all the answers the same (maybe someone who did well in statistics can tell us why????). Ok, so that's the technical... now here's my personal observation:

I did this experiment on three DSST exams: Every answer that I was positive of had the question number and the answer scribbled down on a piece of paper. After the test, I checked to see if there were any patterns.... for example: What letter has the greatest percentage of representation? Very interesting: On all three exams where I did the experiment, C was represented > 30% of the time in the questions that I was positive I had the correct answer! No other letter came anywhere close (percentages in the low 20's). From that point on, if I have to guess.... it's 'C'.

Hope this helps!

[Inwe]

Very Cool!! I'm going to try that on Principles of Supervision.

[snazzlefrag]

One more point to add to Snazzlefrag's excellent answer... this is partially scientific and partially my personal observation:

When you cannot even narrow down at all, or if you are blindly guessing because time is about to run out on the test... when it's truly a guess, Rob mentioned that you will get the answer 25% of the time... true, but only if you guess all the same answer (Make ALL your guesses be A, or make ALL your guesses B, etc.). A mathemetician taught me that... he said that you don't get your full 25% chance unless you make all the answers the same (maybe someone who did well in statistics can tell us why????). Ok, so that's the technical... now here's my personal observation:

I did this experiment on three DSST exams: Every answer that I was positive of had the question number and the answer scribbled down on a piece of paper. After the test, I checked to see if there were any patterns.... for example: What letter has the greatest percentage of representation? Very interesting: On all three exams where I did the experiment, C was represented > 30% of the time in the questions that I was positive I had the correct answer! No other letter came anywhere close (percentages in the low 20's). From that point on, if I have to guess.... it's 'C'.

Hope this helps!

Hi,

Statistically when guessing, there is no increased benefit to choosing one answer over another on any given question. The probability resets for each individual question's set of answer choices (they are COMPLETELY independent variables), and each answer choice within each question has a statistically equal probability of being the correct one.

You have exactly the same probability of choosing the correct answer whether you choose all A's, all B's, all C's, all D's, or any combination thereof.

With that being said, there is also no additional risk if you do decide to go with all C's. If your observation leads you to suspect that you will do better by choosing all C's, then you should DEFINITELY go with that.

Even in randomness, there can be glimpses of order!
hilarious

Do Well,
Snazzlefrag

[gcalvin]

... when it's truly a guess, Rob mentioned that you will get the answer 25% of the time... true, but only if you guess all the same answer (Make ALL your guesses be A, or make ALL your guesses B, etc.). A mathemetician taught me that... he said that you don't get your full 25% chance unless you make all the answers the same (maybe someone who did well in statistics can tell us why????).

As Snazzlefrag indicated, your mathematician friend was mistaken. If your guesses are truly random, over the long run they will tend to be correct exactly as often as any particular answer would be. This is because the assignment of the correct answer and your guess are two independent random events. If you have Excel, you can do a little experiment to prove it to yourself.

In cell A1, type =INT(RAND()*5) -- this will represent the random correct answers on the exam. Type the same thing in cell B1 -- to represent random guesses at the right answer. In cell C1, type =IF($A1=0,1,0) -- this will generate a 1 in the cell if the correct answer was "A". Copy that to D1-G1, and modify the formula accordingly -- $A1=1, $A1=2, $A1=3, $A1=4. In cell H1, type =IF($A1=$B1,1,0) -- that will be 1 if the random guess in column B was correct. Now copy this row of cells down for 100 rows. Finally, in cell C101, type =SUM(C1:C100) and then copy that to cells D101-H101.

Now if you look at the totals in row 101, you should expect each one to be around 20 -- some will be higher, and some lower. Hit your F9 key to recalculate and see how the sums change. Notice that the random guess total varies just like any of the fixed answer totals. Sometimes it will be the highest, and sometimes it will be the lowest, but it tends to be around 20.

Having said that, it turns out that making truly random guesses is difficult for a human -- we tend to be too pattern-oriented. So it's easier and no less effective (in the long run) to stick with the same answer all the time.

-Gary-