This, I think is absolutely ridiculous. From the CFAI website: Format Change For 2009 CFA Exams CFA Institute is committed to maintaining and improving the standards and consistency of the CFA exams. Research and our own experience indicate that the fourth answer option on multiple choice and item set exams is unnecessary to assess a candidate’s knowledge and skills. Three answer choices are sufficient and effective in discriminating between those candidates that possess the knowledge and skills and those that do not. As a result, we are changing the format of the multiple-choice and item set questions on CFA exams from four answer options to three. https://www.cfainstitute.org/cfaprog/courseofstudy/questions_faq.html
thats stupid
Whatever. Seems like it benefits those who have no clue and guess randomly, as they will have a 1/3 chance of getting it correct vs. 1/4. If anything it takes away from the difficulty.
I would have to think that you’ll now need a much higher percentage to pass.
That’s what I was thinking Bondclipper. I know I guessed a lot this test and when I have to take level II again I will have a better shot. Unless of course I am missing some abstract quant formula that makes the odds worse with three answers compared to four…
thats it? What about “we have to change the LOS again”, just so they can rack in more cash on the book sales. That would be funny if they moved Time Series to Lev 3 again, I would flip
Let’s look on the bright side, there’s one less wrong answer for us to choose!
>I would have to think that you’ll now need a much higher percentage to pass. _________ Probably goes back to a flat 70%, perhaps higher. I mean, theoretically a monkey walks in there now and picks “A” for every answer, and scores 25%, more than a third of the way to a passing grade.
that’s what I was thinking. This will increase random guesses, and lower the chances of those who’ve prepared hard and are on the borderline.
it won’t change the pass rates, it will change the difficulty of the test, which i too think is bogus b/c it completely favors guessers… in regards to difficult they can ask a question like this: These 6 things are characterisitics of corp gov best practices A (6 of the 14 are listed) - correct answer B ( 5 that were not listed above plus one bogus - but still close - are listed) - incorrect b/c you know five, but don’t know one is incorrect C (3 remaining 1 from A, 1 from B, plus the bogus one repeats, so you think that it must be one of the answers since it was repeated twice) - incorrect answer How you like them apples - three options is going to be brutal…
There is no difference actually. If top 40% pass now, top 40% will pass with 3 answers possible. There is normal or similar to normal distribution of results - and you cannot get into right tail by guessing if you have 2 answers possible, since those who prepared will be better in any case.
I hate to be the guinea pig for this experiment.
what’s right tail? you want tail? go check out the post about the talent in white jeans a the london exam…
its clearly a cost-saving measure for CFAI - they dont need to spend as much time developing distractors. they will definitely either raise the difficulty of the test or the passing score threshold - and hey, why not both! Implies more multistep processes they would test or ambiguous and/or arcane qualitative points. Going to 3 choices does change how they would set up those matrix-type answers - now you can eliminate 2 out of 4 if you determine one of the yes/no answers for column a or b.
monte- lmfao
don’t you think this raises the possiblility of the exam getting harder? right now you can generally get rid of two of the four options which for a reasonably prepared candidate means more like 1/2 chances on most questions rather than the 1/4 odds that people assume. If the CFAI moves toward 3 plausible answers rather than 2, on items where you are not sure of the answer you are looking at 1/3 on your guesses or decreased odds.
Well at least we should get our results faster right? I mean, thats a 120 less options to mull over 
this means you have to read 25% less words. so people who can’t speak english will do better. the revision advantages those who are slow readers in english.
do you think they will move to negative marking to penalise guessing?
BondClipper Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > >I would have to think that you’ll now need a much > higher percentage to pass. > _________ > > Probably goes back to a flat 70%, perhaps higher. > > > I mean, theoretically a monkey walks in there now > and picks “A” for every answer, and scores 25%, > more than a third of the way to a passing grade. Let’s look at the effect of changing to 3 choices. JDV has demonstrated many times previously that there is no chance of passing randomly currently with 4 choices. Using DeMoivre-Laplace (hat tip JDV): Mean: 1/3 * 120 = 40 Var: 1/3 * 2/3 * 120 = 26.67 stdev: 5.16 So if passing mark is 70%, P(random pass) = P(Z > (84.5-40)/5.16) = P(Z>8.62) = 0 (or as close to it as I can be bothered to calculate) So let’s say our tolerance is that there should be < 10^-5 chance of passing randomly (there are about 100,000 takers each year). That would require the mps to be set at 62/120 or 51%, which is unlikely. Random guessing isn’t a worry.