Tutoring by John - Serving Berkeley, San Francisco, Alameda & San Jose.
Tutoring by John - Serving Berkeley, San Francisco, Alameda & San Jose.
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Blog - Answers to Frequently Asked Questions and More!
  • Testimonials
  • Pricing
  • John's YouTube Tutoring
  • Need a Resume, CV, and/or Cover Letter?
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Blog - Answers to Frequently Asked Questions and More!
  • Testimonials
  • Pricing
  • John's YouTube Tutoring
  • Need a Resume, CV, and/or Cover Letter?

Tutoring blog! :-D

From Quora: "Why did the College Board used to count wrong answers against you?"

6/4/2022

0 Comments

 

Click here for the original Quora post!

The process where “wrong answers count[ed] against you” was called a “guessing penalty.” The idea was, with five possible answers (there were 5 choices before the “new” SAT of 2016 to the present) if you lost 1/4 a point for every wrong answer, you wouldn’t gain net points by guessing.



The idea worked as follows. Let’s assume you took SAT sometime before 2016, but you were completely ignorant as to the correct answer to any of the questions, so you guessed blindly. You would gain 1 point for every answer you guessed correctly, but lose 1/4 of a point you already won, rather than simply not getting any points for answer you answered incorrectly. Guessing randomly, you’d get 1/5 of the answers right, and 4/5 of them wrong. I’m speaking generally. I know someone COULD guess all the right answers, and someone else could guess and get NONE of the right answers. On average, people who guess will get 1/5 right, and 4/5 wrong. If you lose 1/4 of a point for every wrong answer, you end up losing (1/4) * 4, or 1, points for every 5 “blind” guesses you make. If you gain 1 point for every 1 out every 5 guesses, your 1 point is cancelled out by the 1 point you lose for guessing 4 questions wrongly.


So the idea was people who just guessed blindly wouldn’t be likely to gain any “unearned” points by guessing. However, as even the College Board put on their SAT test booklets, it was to a test-takers advantage to guess if, and only if, the test-taker could eliminate at least one obviously wrong answer. For example, a math problem answer choice that estimates a probability as less than zero or greater than one would be an obviously wrong choice, and could be eliminated. That would work because then then chance of guessing correctly would be 1/4, and the chance of guessing incorrectly would be 3/4. So there would be a 1/4 chance of getting 1 point, and 3/4 chance of losing 1/4 point.


Multiplying the 1/4 chance of a 1 point gain, we expect can a gain of 1/4 of a point for each guess where one wrong answer was eliminated. Multiplying the 3/4 chance of a 1/4 point loss, we expect can a loss of 3/16 of a point for every guess where one wrong answer as been eliminated. So, suddenly, for the same 5 guesses, we should expect 5/4 points gained, and 15/16 of a point lost. That’s a gain of 5/4 = 20/16, minus 15/16 points lost, which leaves us with a net gain of 5/16 of a point.


So, if someone guessed 16 times, but was able to eliminate only one answer for each problem, that person, on average, would gain 5 “unearned” points, which actually fair, since the kid who’s at least able to tell ONE answer is obviously wrong deserves SOME credit for that, especially if the kid can do that for multiple problems.

But SAT changed the system to make it like the ACT’s system (only four answer choices per problem, and no guessing penalty). Is that better? I don’t know, but at least it will make people who would have been too nervous about the guessing penalty to make educated guesses more likely to make at least TRY to guess the right answers. And it’s not as though the people who try to randomly guess all the answers will get very far - either they’ll get low scores, or their scores will be flagged as anomalous (i.e. unexpected, like say, a D-average student getting a perfect 1600 on the SAT) and they may to retake the test, go to arbitration with the College Board, etc.
Hope this helps - sorry about the long-winded explanation, but not sorry enough to delete it. :-)
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author: John Linneball Who did you think? ;-) 

    I'm the proprietor and only tutor for this business; that's why I named it after me.

    Archives

    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    June 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly