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Wow, this is a remarkable level of gaming that I never was aware of! > - Within the grammar questions, Choice (e) "None of the above" is 99% of the time NEVER

by knzhou 7y ago

Wow, this is a remarkable level of gaming that I never was aware of! > - Within the grammar questions, Choice (e) "None of the above" is 99% of the time NEVER the answer. > - The math questions will usually have (1) answer that is an outlier. 95% of the time, this is not the correct answer; (2) will be similar to the correct answer in different ways; and (1) will be the correct answer This is exactly the reason that, when I design tests, I strive to make "none of the above" or the outlier answer the correct one about 20% of the time. I really hope the SAT writers are doing that now. > ALL sections (and sub-sections) have questions that strictly increase in difficulty / projected "miss-rate" as time goes on. The computerized GRE goes even further... it's like a videogame, it feeds you harder questions the better you do, then reverts to easier ones when you mess up.

thebradbain 7y ago
I completely agree, and as much as I hate CollegeBoard hope they've done more to reinvent their tests, as I do think objective measurement of some kind does have a place in admissions, even though perhaps as not the end-all-be-all it used to be. I used to be semi-adjacent to that sphere, but I do not know anything about the current format of the tests other than what is published.
fyz 7y ago
> The computerized GRE goes even further... it's like a videogame, it feeds you harder questions the better you do, then reverts to easier ones when you mess up. Isn't that one of the better ways to finely calibrate a score? Rough approximation of heapsort?
- knzhou 7y ago
  Yes, it definitely is! It does feel a little crazy, though, when suddenly all the vocab words are like, "tergiversate" and "pulchritudinous". And then when you get them all wrong it's back to "the cat sat on the mat". :P
walshemj 7y ago
Yes you need to learn to look for the distractors and rule them out

by knzhou 7y ago

thebradbain 7y ago

I completely agree, and as much as I hate CollegeBoard hope they've done more to reinvent their tests, as I do think objective measurement of some kind does have a place in admissions, even though perhaps as not the end-all-be-all it used to be. I used to be semi-adjacent to that sphere, but I do not know anything about the current format of the tests other than what is published.

fyz 7y ago

> The computerized GRE goes even further... it's like a videogame, it feeds you harder questions the better you do, then reverts to easier ones when you mess up. Isn't that one of the better ways to finely calibrate a score? Rough approximation of heapsort?

knzhou 7y ago
Yes, it definitely is! It does feel a little crazy, though, when suddenly all the vocab words are like, "tergiversate" and "pulchritudinous". And then when you get them all wrong it's back to "the cat sat on the mat". :P

walshemj 7y ago

Yes you need to learn to look for the distractors and rule them out