The Student Room Group
Reply 1
buzfvar_1
Hi!
I read somewhere that if you have to plain guess on a multiple choice test, you should put the SAME letter down for all of the questions that you have to guess, in order to increase your chances of getting the right answer.

Is this true, and if so, why?

Thanks.


No, you should always put option 2 or B :wink:
Reply 2
I dont think that that is a very good idea, but here is my rough explanation why.

If there are 4 options then roughly 25% of them will be say A. Therefore if you put A for every answer then you should get roughly 25% right. (the same goes for every answer). Your odds are improved the fewer the options, and get worse the more there are.

If you guess randomly then And the righly answer sequence goes A, D, C, B and you put D, A, B, C you would get 0. but if you had put A evertime you would have got 1.

It is possible that you would have put the 100% right sequence had you guessed randomly, but i cant calculate those odds!

Of course on most tests you will have a vaugue idea and can make an 'educated' guess, so you dont need to flail randomly with a pencil in the direction of the paper.
Reply 3
Say there are 4 options A,B,C,D. The chances are the answers will be spread almost evenly between the 4, as stated above. Therefore always chosing A will get you ~25%. However chosing randomly will give you anywhere between 0-100%, if you only need 20% to pass then you should always mark the same box, however if you need, for arguements sake 40%, it is worth taking the risk and randomly selecting boxes. However, if you really don't know all the answers you shouldn't be sitting the damn test.
Any combination of random guesses will be equally as effective as any other.
Reply 5
From my experience, there seems to be a lot more 'C' or '3' than other answers... on one test I guessed every question, all Cs, and I got 85% :eek: !!!
Reply 6
buzfvar_1
Hi!
I read somewhere that if you have to plain guess on a multiple choice test, you should put the SAME letter down for all of the questions that you have to guess, in order to increase your chances of getting the right answer.

Is this true, and if so, why?

Thanks.


Assuming each question is independant of the others then guessing randomly will be no different from answering each question with the same letter.
Reply 7
Iluvatar
Any combination of random guesses will be equally as effective as any other.



How is that possible??

Surely you can guess them all right or all wrong!
Reply 8
Hopefully you'll know every single answer and won't have to guess! :biggrin:
Reply 9
On my AS-Level General Studies paper I made patterns in the boxes of the multiple-choice paper.

Oddly, that paper was given 100%

Luck?
buzfvar_1
Hi!
I read somewhere that if you have to plain guess on a multiple choice test, you should put the SAME letter down for all of the questions that you have to guess, in order to increase your chances of getting the right answer.

Is this true, and if so, why?

Thanks.

I don't do that. With me it's just a case of 'ip-dip-do', or I drop my pen on the paper and see which answer it lands on. It helped me get 2 B's for my Spanish reading modules which go towards 15% of my final grade altogether:cool:
Reply 11
icetopaz_h454
I don't do that. With me it's just a case of 'ip-dip-do', or I drop my pen on the paper and see which answer it lands on. It helped me get 2 B's for my Spanish reading modules which go towards 15% of my final grade altogether:cool:


lol :cool: , I wish I had that kinda luck
Reply 12
Well, actually, there is a very good trick I've been applying on multiple choice questions:
The answeres usually have some similiarity, e.g.
1. AB2
2. BB4
3. AA2
3. AA3
Some would just randomly guess, but a good lead is that the in the above example of answeres, 2 doesn't seem to fit (as there are A in all other answers). Then we strike answer one out as well as both 3 and 4 are AA. lastly, since both answer one and 3 has the same ending number, it shows that it is likely the one of the is right. So, we find that the probabilty of the answer being 3 in this case is large, I would argue ~70%. It's all about finding the patterns :smile: