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I don't think it reflects the fragility of the student's mathematical reasoning behaviour so much as their ability to play the meta-game of the test itself. The

I don't think it reflects the fragility of the student's mathematical reasoning behaviour so much as their ability to play the meta-game of the test itself. They know they are expected to provide answer, and that they don't know how to reach for it - so they play the odds. I for one have used this technique, exploiting for example the fact that in school, correct answers tended to be round numbers, as an heuristic, for example. I believe if "insufficient data" was stated as a possible answer (which the student's are not accustomed to), they would state that.

mc32 10y ago
Exactly. Students say to themselves, "while questions can be tricky, they are seldom so tricky that no answer is expected. As far as I can recall even for tricky questions, an answer was ascertainable, I must be missing something, this is all I got, so here goes. A remote chance is better than no chance (answer) and at least I tried and didn't give up".
Houshalter 10y ago
There's nothing wrong with guessing an answer. What's horrifying is that the students actually try to solve it mathematically rather than just making up a guess. And they stick with it even if the results are unreasonable (one student guessed 625, for instance.) According to the article the students didn't even try ask the teacher if the question was misprinted or something.