AF Commentator BChadwick , who describes himself as a CFA Charterholder and a BoardMember has said:
a) He had spoken about the grading of CFA exams to " someone recently who was a CFAI grader" b)That based on information provided by that grader, he concludes if there has been grader error, then , the error could “have affected your score by one question.” He concludes by saying: True, a little bit of noise can make a difference between band 10 and a pass , but people there did not clearly pass or not, and so there will always be some noise. There may also be some people who passed because they were lucky with the noise too. However, despite his conclusion that such errors are merely noise, readers will note that BChadwick has said , after speaking to a CFA grader, that an error could have affected candidate scores “by one question”. BChadwick’s comments have been made in light of information provided by a CFA grader , and are different from the standard CFA line that no error could ever arise, except perhaps in tabulation. BChandwick’s revelation may therefore provide those on Band 10, or who have ever been on Band 10, or perhaps even Bands 9 or 8, with grounds to request CFA review the marking process and not simply re–tabulate total grades. BChadwick made these comments in response to my recent post on markers and their standard of English. Regardless of whether readers agree or disagree with that post the issue in this post is the admission by a CFA charterholder , after speaking to CFA grader, that an error affecting the final mark could have arisen. END
Monk, based on the above commentary, I think you should abandon the CFA program and enroll in law school. You have a bright future ahead of yourself as an attorney. I work with them daily and you would fit right in.
Retab is not a re-grade…they simply add your scores together again…they do not go through every single question again and regrade it. It is a waste of money. Stop looking for excuses and either 1) start studying again, 2) end your quest for the Charter or 3) do as listed above and go to law school
Trying to explain how things work to this guy seems to be a hopeless cause. But just in case, I will try one more time:
You have a LOT to learn. I am basing this not just on these posts but on other posts such as your question about the grinold kroner calculation where it was very clear you just didn’t grasp a key concept and no matter how many people explained this to you, you continued arguing that you were right, without seeing the big picture and clearly failing to grasp the meaning on the sign on the stock repurchase. This shows that you are simply memorizing things without trying to actually understand. You will never pass Level III this way and this will hurt you in real life, when you have to deal with problems that can’t be solved by rote memorization.
Did you ever consider that this myopic thinking and flat out arrogance could be why you continue to fail? You just ignore definitions and guidance and go about as if the world will run the way YOU think it should. If you think one way, but everyone else disagrees, it’s not always the case that you are right. You have to seriously consider that you could be looking at things completely wrong and adjust your assumptions.
And no more insulting of any people here who are trying to help you. Read the responses people have taken time out of their busy days to provide you and you would be well served to stay off of this site going forward and put your time into trying to understand what I have written. Really think about this.
I may become a charterholder soon enough and I admit that the possibility of CFAI being run by outer space aliens is statistically bigger than zero.
This is the admission by a CFA candidate, after speaking to his cat, that an error affecting the previous belief in the planet on which CFAI is based have arisen. END
You probably can’t find CFAI stating anywhere that errors are impossible
What the sole opinions of a single charterholder and a single grader have to do with anything?
This can basically happen in every test in the world. You said yourself something akin to “post-graduate courses should measure the capability to argue about deep thoughts yadda yadda” - how can somebody objectively measure that, to decimals?
Technically, the only completely fair way to decide worthy candidates would be to test every single LoS in every single way, and somehow trying to nullify points awarded by guessing right (good luck with that). Right now you may get lucky, as in almost any test in the world.
Paraphrasing Lenny from The Simpsons: “everybody makes mistakes - that’s why they put little rubbers at the other end of the pencils” - NASA blows things up, governments are a mess, Buffet sometimes buy the wrong things, and you made another thread.
Seriously, I’ve been asking you on 3 threads already and I still have no idea:
What’s your point? What do you want to happen? I swear I can’t figure it out. I would really like to know if I agree with you.
BTW, great post from DoubleDip - I think it can be applied to any of us (this includes you, monk)
Perhaps a bad analog. An athlete in 4th position can’t get any medal, but we would say he/she is still a great athlete. By the way, Tulku is a monk, but I’m not.-
Thank you for all your efforts monk. We finally have closure on this debate.
Now that we know the AM is totally biased and graders can be very discriminatory, can you do a similar research on the PM section? Can you find out if the scantron grading machine has a fried resistor somewhere that is causing it to grade all answer sheets differently and thus CFAI isn’t testing our knowledge on the curriculum but instead our expertise at filling in bubbles?
Despite the many incoherent ramblings of monk and the fact that I disagree with 99% of what he says, the one thing this does bring to light is the fact that for your $100 retab fee the CFAI should at least read and thouroughly review the exams submitted for Level III. If this comes at a higher cost than so be it. This would satisfy most Band 10 people and give them their due. I doubt this would ever change the outcome, but it would put to rest any debate (at least from sane, rational people).
big ML - it’s been several years so I don’t recall exactly where I got this information, but it is my understanding that all band 10’s are fully regraded before they are officially determined to be non-passing and some actually do end up being bumped to passing. The people who benefit from this have no idea though that they were actually slated to fail prior to the regrading. So, all band 10s have actually been graded twice before the taker is notified of not passing.
Per the CFAI website, it looks like a second grader reviews the AM sections of the middle 50 percent of the distribution of scores, which should include all band 10 candidates. It looks like they really do an awful lot to remove the subjective aspect of grading for the AM section:
Grading coordinators, team captains, and CFA Institute staff meet daily to ensure consistent application of gradingpolicies. Examinations are also checked several times during grading to be sure that no recording errors or data entry errors have been made. The error checking process is repeated several times and continues after the grading process has been completed.
After all examinations have been fully graded during the first week, approximately the middle 50 percent of the distribution of scores are graded in their entirety again—a process known as senior grading. Senior graders, approximately half the initial grading group, are not permitted to re-grade papers that they graded during initial grading. The purpose of senior grading is to ensure that candidates whose papers fall within a large range that encompasses possible minimum passing scores are afforded every opportunity to pass the examination.
All examinations are subject to an additional quality control check. Each examination book is reviewed page by page to ensure that every candidate answer was located, graded, and scored and that the number of points awarded by the grader on the inside of the examination book is consistent with the score recorded in the grading database.
No, I don’t think regrading tests should be an option. During the grading process, hundreds of charterholders are flown in from all over the world, and they are divided into groups to specialize in grading just 1 part of a question. This ensures that points are awarded fairly across the board. How would you replicate this in a regrade situation? I think everyone gets their shot, and if you fail, you fail. A retabulation of points is ok, but a regrade is out of the question.
Monk, I feel the need to tell you this. The reason I stopped responding to your posts (despite how entertaining it was to keep your nonsensical rantings going) is that I genuinely felt bad after reading your other thread on repurchase yield. I can tell that you were really trying to learn the material, but that you clearly have some kind of mental and/or emotional blockage that is holding you back in a way that you may not even realize. Look at all the people that put in their time to help you on that thread. They didn’t have to do that, but they did. Rather than appreciating their efforts, you just go on the defense with condescending remarks and a continued insistence that you are correct. Even when people showed you where the CFAI answer comes from, you keep holding on to your incorrect assumptions. Maybe you think you are smarter than everyone. Maybe you think you’re too good for the “textbook” CFA answers. But if that’s how you feel, why do you keep spending your time trying to pass?
I don’t know if you have friends or family in your life to knock some sense into you, but you are really walking on the line of delusion now, with yet another posting. I’m giving you the benefit of doubt that maybe your postings are just disgruntled remarks from another failed score, but enough is enough. I would really let this go if I were you. Go take a walk in the park, take a swim, enjoy the rest of summer, and stop obsessing over the same issue, or you might really wake up in sorry shape.
I know this won’t happen any time soon…It would be nice if CFAI can send a little more detailed score report of AM Questions for the $100 fee. A range of “<=50%” is just too wide, it could be 0% or 50%.
