Samuel Liew’s Blog

I’ve always wondered about the science behind making an educated guess for MCQ questions, especially if you have absolutely no clue about or just want to confirm your answer. I finally stumbled upon this cool article on the net which I want to repost and share (use at your own risk).

Intelligent MCQ Guessing

• Alternatives with absolute or universal qualifiers are usually wrong (“all”, “every”, “never”, “in no case”, “in every case”, etc.)
• Alternatives that seem impossible or that seem completely unrelated to the question are usually wrong (watch out for alternatives that are true, but have nothing to do with the question).
• If two or more alternatives say the same thing, each is probably wrong (you can have two that are wrong, but not two that are right on m/c tests).
• The answer to one question is sometimes given away in another question (tests contain a lot of information – use it).
• When 3 or more alternatives deal in different ways with one concept, one of them is usually right. The instructor usually doesn’t waste 3 alternatives on single incorrect concept. In this case, he or she most likely wants to have you discriminate knowledge.
• If two answers contain a similar sounding word, such as “subordination” and “subrogation,” choose one of these.
• If two answers are almost identical except for a few words, choose one of these.
• If two answers seem extreme, they should be eliminated, and a guess made as to the remaining answers. As an example, if the answer is to be a number, and 3, 57, 89, 1103 are the choices given, you should eliminate the 3 and 1103, and take a guess at one of the remaining choices.
• If you are unable to eliminate any answer on a 4 answer question, choose the third. Experience has shown that it has a better than 25% chance of being the correct answer.
• Don’t try to apply definitions from outside the course. Answer the questions found on your lecture and class reading; not based on educational knowledge that you have.
• Never argue with a question. Accept it at face value.
• When all else fails:
  1. choose the alternative that makes the best sentence, when added to the open-ended question.
  2. look for subject-verb agreement.
  3. know the instructor’s quirks of language.
  4. choose the longer answer. The instructor may have used more words to make the answer precise; thus the most correct.
• None of these rules works all the time, so use them only if you must.

I haven’t been blogging because I have been busy lately with end-of-semester assignments and studying for upcoming exams. Anyway, I have posted my progress on my website.

I have been spending a lot of time doing my SETM assignment, and I’m making good progress because I found a similar program that I could use to help check my code logic. Now I got one more part left – to decode the hex code to instructions, so that I can program the metrics part. I’m trying to finish it by today, so I have time for the other three assignments.

This morning the lecturer was unhappy at everyone in the lab because nobody did his favourite question from the previous lab, even though we had one month to do it. Only me and another guy did it. The lecturer said he will put that lab question in the final exam.

Yesterday I submitted my SS assignment. Also got back the results of the FCS test during the lecture =/ didn’t do too well or too badly >.< above average but was lower than my expectations. Actually everyone’s expectations – the average score was 53/100 in the class, fourteen out of forty people failed. Guess the lecturer was a bit too strict on the marking, and the questions were almost all open-ended – completely NO multiple-choice questions.

I stayed up all night trying to understand and do today’s HF lab, and only went to sleep at 4:30am. Woke up ten minutes before the lecture and was almost late. Luckily I’m staying near uni… Anyway, the lab was really hard, only managed to get to halfway in the two hours. My lab mate and I decided to attend the make-up lab lesson at the end of the semester to complete the other half.

Today I got back my SETM assignment… didn’t do that well, but I passed!

In this assignment, I have to program a software that uses the Simple-DES (Data Encryption Standard) algorithm to encrypt and decrypt plain text file.

I just completed it. Have spent the past few days cramming to complete it, as I encountered several problems that were very difficult to fix.

More about the assignment, my report and program sources are available on the newly-created school page.

I have added a new page for my uni projects, so you can see what I’m doing (reports, programs, etc.)

It is accessible from the navigation bar on the left.
http://www.samliew.com/school.php