# Test Taking Strategy



## Ship Wreck PE (Aug 20, 2013)

Has anyone ever thought about counting answers on a multiple choice exam like people count cards in a casino?

With 40 questions, and 25% going to each of 4 answers. It seems to me if you knew you had 25 correct answers, and they were leaning heavily toward a few certain letters, the remaining questions should be guessed using the least used letters??


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## John QPE (Aug 20, 2013)

I did use this as my guess strategy for the FE....I saw that I had a lot of B, and D ... so used A as my guess letter...but this is all BS, becuase there is no equal distribution of answers.


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## RIP - VTEnviro (Aug 20, 2013)

> With 40 questions, and 25% going to each of 4 answers.




Where does it say they are equally distributed?


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## Ship Wreck PE (Aug 21, 2013)

They are mostly equal on the NCEES practice exam.


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## sycamore PE (Aug 21, 2013)

You are wasting your time to try to come up with a statistical guessing method. The only good advice that I have about guessing is to half-fill the bubble for questions you're not sure on so that you can easily identify them if you have time to go back and do them, and if you run out of time, you can quickly fill the "best guess" bubbles in all the way.


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## ikesdsu (Aug 21, 2013)

Believe me, as someone who took the test twice, you don't want to endanger your chance of passing the test on a equal distribution guessing.


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## Peele1 (Aug 21, 2013)

Most tests (probably the FE/PE) have their answers randomly generated by a computer. This means that there should be a fairly equal distribution, with some standard deviation.

In order to get enough right, you need to know the material, any differences in answer choice should not influence your answers. You also never know if the computer has been configured to be completely random, equal, approximately equal, or heavily weigh for or against a certain answer. Also, this could be different on each test/version.

The only strategy I recommend is to know the material. A random guess is probably no better or worse than a statistical analysis, since you don't know the underlying plan.


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## Ship Wreck PE (Aug 22, 2013)

http://www.ratio.huji.ac.il/sites/default/files/publications/dp252.pdf


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## John QPE (Aug 22, 2013)

then go for it...


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## Ship Wreck PE (Aug 22, 2013)

It only works if you can get 70 to 80% correct,

So studying and knowing the material is very important. It might help you get a higher passing grade with bragging rights.


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## Lomarandil (Aug 22, 2013)

The article you linked makes two favorable assumptions (People writing multiple-choice problems choose the order of the correct and incorrect answer, and NITE's anecdotal and unwritten rules of thumb can be taken applied universally), and then draws a conclusion based on those assumptions.

In the case of the former, NCEES orders all answers in numerical order (from least to greatest) and chooses incorrect answers based on logical distractors -- so this inherent bias in the tests written by your high school or college professor is systematically removed. If this first assumption is not correct, there is no evidence to base a claim that NCEES will then follow similar rules of thumb to NITE's balancing procedure (if NCEES balances at all).

I'm no expert in the field, but it feels like a weak paper to me.. where the authors had a desired result in mind before they started.

You will have a much better chance by eliminating a few logical distractors and guessing from the remaining answers on any problems that stymie you. You're an engineer. Presumably, you understand the basic rationale behind why items in your field (whether that's a circuit, a turbine, or a bridge) work the way they do. Use that to succeed, not some statistical test-gaming procedure.


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## ikesdsu (Aug 22, 2013)

Lomarandil said:


> The article you linked makes two favorable assumptions (People writing multiple-choice problems choose the order of the correct and incorrect answer, and NITE's anecdotal and unwritten rules of thumb can be taken applied universally), and then draws a conclusion based on those assumptions.
> 
> In the case of the former, NCEES orders all answers in numerical order (from least to greatest) and chooses incorrect answers based on logical distractors -- so this inherent bias in the tests written by your high school or college professor is systematically removed. If this first assumption is not correct, there is no evidence to base a claim that NCEES will then follow similar rules of thumb to NITE's balancing procedure (if NCEES balances at all).
> 
> ...


I agree with you Lomarandil

But Spsukenyon if you think it will work then I guess I would say go for it. It will cost you precious time and may cause you to fail but you could try it. Also I don't think I have ever heard someone brag that their passing grade was higher than another persons. I wouldn't do it for that reason either.

You have a great resource here that isn't usually available, hundreds of Engineers that have passed the test, and many that had to take the test multiple times to pass (like myself). Many have posted what they have had to do to pass, and probably 99% of the time it was just work as many problems as you can. I have never seen someone on here say I made sure I had the same number of letters and passed. This test can't be beaten by using tricks or logic, it just requires hard work.

But that is just my opinion, if you think it will work go for it and let us know how you do.


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## DavidPE (Aug 22, 2013)

You're wasting your time. You could be studying.


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