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Yeah, the wording is quite poor. The second question about the distribution of random answers to the test is literally incoherent. They probably meant to ask

by bloaf 6y ago

Yeah, the wording is quite poor. The second question about the distribution of random answers to the test is literally incoherent. They probably meant to ask a question about the expected number of random answers on a randomly completed test, but they worded it such that they are asking about the distribution of answers on a single test.

virtuous_signal 6y ago
>Assuming that every question in this 20-question test has only 1 right answer and you choose to answer each question randomly, what is the chance that you're so bad that you only get 4 questions right or less? They probably mean for you to assume that 1) each question has 5 answer choices, and 2) you select one of them with equal probability. But given that this is question #2, assumption (1) is kind of a guess, and (2) should be explicitly stated... (the answer btw has to do with the binomial distribution - and you definitely need some heavy arithmetic, so are they testing your gut instinct?)
- SamReidHughes 6y ago
  The messed up question I was referring to, and I think bloaf was referring to, is a later one, the second one involving random answers: > Assuming that every question in this 20-question test has only 1 right answer and you choose to guess the answer of each question randomly, then in terms of the number of correctly-guessed answers, approximately 68% of them will fall between: > A. 2.2 and 5.8 > B. 0.8 and 7.2 > C. 6.8 and 12.5 > D. 7 and 13 > E. None of the above Another messed up question was the one early on asking whether the dot product operator is "associative/commutative on addition" or not. That's not a thing that actually means something.
  - tromp 6y ago
    I answered none of the above precisely because associativity doesn't apply to an operator that maps 2 vectors to a scalar. But it still felt wrong.
    - SamReidHughes 6y ago
      Oh, I was parsing the responses like "(Non-associative, commutative and distributive) on addition". And no, the dot product is not commutative on addition. But it's meant to be "Non-associative, commutative and (distributive on addition)".

by bloaf 6y ago

virtuous_signal 6y ago

>Assuming that every question in this 20-question test has only 1 right answer and you choose to answer each question randomly, what is the chance that you're so bad that you only get 4 questions right or less? They probably mean for you to assume that 1) each question has 5 answer choices, and 2) you select one of them with equal probability. But given that this is question #2, assumption (1) is kind of a guess, and (2) should be explicitly stated... (the answer btw has to do with the binomial distribution - and you definitely need some heavy arithmetic, so are they testing your gut instinct?)

SamReidHughes 6y ago
The messed up question I was referring to, and I think bloaf was referring to, is a later one, the second one involving random answers: > Assuming that every question in this 20-question test has only 1 right answer and you choose to guess the answer of each question randomly, then in terms of the number of correctly-guessed answers, approximately 68% of them will fall between: > A. 2.2 and 5.8 > B. 0.8 and 7.2 > C. 6.8 and 12.5 > D. 7 and 13 > E. None of the above Another messed up question was the one early on asking whether the dot product operator is "associative/commutative on addition" or not. That's not a thing that actually means something.
- tromp 6y ago
  I answered none of the above precisely because associativity doesn't apply to an operator that maps 2 vectors to a scalar. But it still felt wrong.
  - SamReidHughes 6y ago
    Oh, I was parsing the responses like "(Non-associative, commutative and distributive) on addition". And no, the dot product is not commutative on addition. But it's meant to be "Non-associative, commutative and (distributive on addition)".