<p>Not all “guessing” is equal. We need a name for answering with less than 100% confidence. I have long argued that a well prepared tester should go slowly and answer everything they get to. But I don’t call that guessing – I call it answering. And I emphatically reject the "if you can eliminate n choices " approach as misguided. On the other hand, a tester who omits questions because of a too-high confidence threshold will score below their potential also in part because they end up spending time on problems that are too hard for them.</p>
<p>Guessing is supposed to not affect your score at all. However, if you can eliminate a few answer choices, then it does. Still, I don’t see why this happens, because if that was true wouldn’t females guess less often on regular tests, even though there is no penalty for guessing, and thus do worse?</p>
<p>Assume you have 20 questions to solve, each with two possible answer choices. That’s a 1/2 chance that you’ll get 10 questions right.</p>
<p>Meaning 10- (10x0.25) = 7.5 or 8. So you got 8 raw points out of 20 guessed answers, as opposed to guessing nothing at all, and getting 0 raw points.</p>
<p>All in all, guessing is indeed advisable, but only when you can eliminate a good number of the other answer choices. (2-3)</p>
<p>Well, this just comes down to the average female being a less accurate judge of when guess, which is a simple math problem, so it basically gives a slight bit more emphasis on math to the SAT, which I think is commendable since there is only 1 math section but 2 English section.</p>
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<p>Indeed. Read the paper referenced in the linked article, and you will see that this was one grad students study of a total of 340 research subjects given 4 different experimental treatments. The test given was NOT the SAT, and no attempt was made to recruit a representative sample of high school aged SAT takers; the test-taking sample was anything but random or representative. And, where this article was published, how much peer review it was subjected to, and whether this particular research design has been replicated with similar results is all missing here. Sorry, my undergrad major was psych, and the one thing I learned all too well, and reported in paper after paper, was that most research like this is inconclusive at best. So although this is an intriguing line of thought about women being more conservative than men in guessing, this is all mere speculation. This is the kind of stuff that I find irritating, that one persons preliminary research is often reported in various media as the latest amazing finding without any kind of critical questioning of the validity of the research.</p>
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<p>While I whole-heartedly agree, it doesn’t mean that colleges do. I strongly believe that top colleges view a 2030 a LOT differently than say, a 2100+. It is one thing to have test scores above the college’s mean and another…</p>
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<p>Bingo, except that risk tolerance is only one ‘explanation’ for the gap. Another suggestion is that men are more competitive in this test situation (p.25). The authors also put forth a ‘sociological’ rationale (p.26). </p>
<p>Suggest ya’ll read the study instead of the summary on the blog.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~kbaldiga/Gender.pdf[/url]”>http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~kbaldiga/Gender.pdf</a></p>
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<p>But what if the authors were studying test-taking competitiveness between genders and just used Subject Tests for their sample test? Ignoring the scaled scores, the fact is that the authors found that women filled-in fewer bubbles than men when a guessing penalty was introduced.</p>
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<p>And the answer is?</p>
<p>Additional research, published, indicating a competitiveness gender gap in math:</p>
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<p><a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/~niederle/NV.JEP.pdf[/url]”>http://www.stanford.edu/~niederle/NV.JEP.pdf</a></p>
<p>But by using Subject Tests, the Harvard grad student eliminates the possibility of math bias being a factor in her study.</p>
<p>Those researches are stupid because I don’t really trust psychological researches because there are many factors not accounted for in any psychological research unlike biology,physics,math where you know all the factors and sure it will have this result.</p>
<p>The reason they say it’s okay to guess if you can definitely eliminate one of the answer choices, is that you now have a 1/4 chance of getting the answer right. Applying the same tactic to 10 questions, it totally evens out. If you get 2 questions guessed right, and 8 questions guessed wrong, then it evens out to a raw score of 0. No harm no foul. On the other-hand though, I do firmly believe that students out there have a sort of intuition that helps spot the right answer when they see it. Taking in the previous factor, it evens out to about 4 right and 6 wrong. Walla~ you’ve gained yourself 3 raw score points, as opposed to a 0 raw score resulting from not guessing.</p>
<p>^SirThanksAlot</p>
<p>You don’t think the probability is 1/4 of getting it right because as you solve many questions that probability will decrease so for example to have 2 Bs</p>
<p>1/4^2 = 1/64 of getting two right Bs I know each question probability is different than each question,but I like to think about it this way coz we don’t have just 1 answer out of 4 for all 54 questions.</p>
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<p>I can only comment on math, but I’ve never seen a guesser with such an intuition. In my experience, if someone needs to guess (i.e., they don’t know how to solve the problem), he or she also can’t eliminate wrong answers. The student ends up wasting time for no benefit. If anything, I would suggest half-jokingly that guessers have an intuition for eliminating the correct answer.</p>
<p>Women guess less, yet the average SAT scores for each section are higher for male…</p>
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<p>Fig, I will do the other half and add that I believe that people who HAVE to rely on guessing have a distinct inability to eliminate the wrong answers. This is especially true in the verbal sections. </p>
<p>Again, there are cases where guessing might be helpful. Guessing on the grid-ins has no negative (and extremely low chances of success, of course.) A student who is close to a possible 800 might decide to guess on his or her last two unaswered questions. </p>
<p>But, in the end, this is a subject that will never change. The one-eyed will continue to lead the blind towards inefficient or destructive methods.</p>
<p>It absolutely reflects a gender bias. It’s very similar to findings that women do worse in seminar classes because they are less willing to speak up than the guys, due to cultural patterns that encourage women not to speak out.</p>
<p>Obviously there is gender bias. For those against gender bias, do you really believe that out of the 1,000,000+ test takers, there will be equal or almost equal percentages for male and female regarding test performances (guessing, scores, etc) ??</p>
<p>So men are more risk tolerant. This is no shock (speaking in evolutionary terms). Also, why are we assuming men and women will score the same (and should)? And do they have to, is the SAT a way for men to compensate for generally lower grade point averages? Should there be a male and a female SAT test? Some thoughts to consider.</p>
<p>Its funny because the people who claim that guessing is detrimental are probably the only people incapable of guessing effectively, by virtue of their nonexistent logical faculties.</p>
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<p>I’m happy you included the word “probably” in your statement.</p>
<p>For the math section, I have read many dazzling logical defenses of the “guess if you can eliminate n choices” school of thought. They often begin with words to the effect of: “Suppose you guess on 10 questions.” But already, the argument has gone off the rails. Suppose you ARE in fact guessing on 10 math questions. You know what that means? It means you are not prepared enough and you are going too fast and working on too many problems that exceed your difficulty level. A well prepared student following a rational time strategy should not have to “guess” ever. They may have to answer a handful of items with less than 100% confidence, but there should certainly be no eeny-meeny-miney in their approach.</p>
<p>Still, suppose we look past the opening of the argument. Then what follows is an explanantion of rudimentary probability (as if no one else had ever thought of it), beginning with the words: “If you can eliminate…” – but hold on a minute. If WHO can eliminate? The kid who does not know how to do the problem? Don’t you think it is possible that same kid will eliminate the right answer? Ask the long-time tutors and they will tell you that it happens all the time.</p>
<p>I would not be so quick to impugn the logic skills of those who reject the “if you can eliminate n choices, guess from the remainder” approach. But furthermore, if you really believe in that approach, logic would require you to answer ANY question where you had a better than 1 in 5 chance of getting it right. Actually, that is closer to what I recommend. But how can you know that you have a better than 1 in 5 chance? Your own score history and the layout of the test should be your guide.</p>
<p>I would close this comment by saying that I won’t argue about guessing strategy anymore – but something about this topic just sucks me back in every 6 months or so…</p>
<p>I always guess if I am unsure (which is unusual). The risk is worth it, in my opinion.
I’m a girl.</p>
<p>Thank you for the common sense.
Are we moving to a place where “everything” is believed to be
equal fair or otherwise “redistributed”?
College professors: you won’t have a job if this is the case…just like our kids.</p>