Is it possible to get item sets where the questions build up on one another? That is, if you can’t answer the the first problem in the set you won’t be able to solve the rest of them? Or does CFAI make sure that questions in item sets do not behave this way? Thanks
No the questions are all stand alone
Phew. Thanks mzwerner.
They’re not supposed to… But, IMO, there was an exception to the rule this past year in Econ where they asked you to calculate two different components of the Balance of Payments in a single item set; naturally if you got one wrong, you automatically got the other one wrong.
ahah Yeah I rememebr those two… When I saw those two question I drew a blank on how to calc the BOP so I guessed on them and moved on.
This is a good question and I’m happy for the answers!
I also remember an item set in Corporate Finance pertaining to capital budgeting that had a bit of a cascading effect.
They had a merger question that was a build on. If you got the value to the target wrong you got the value to the acquirer wrong.
They are usually stand alone but as you can see from other posters they do sometimes have questions that are related. I know the econ ones i’m pretty sure i was able to get right because i had a vague recollection of the concept and i used the two questions as a check for each other. The capital budgeting one was tricked as it asked you to calculate the NPV adjusting for a particular event i think but i was not coming up anywhere near their answers. One of the later on questions had the NPV without the event so i took that and just took the PV of the event itself and did the math. You may be able to scrap up a few points this way.
I remember the capital budgeting one because on the changed scenereo, I was positive I got it right. Didn’t realize until I was walking out of the exam center that while I did adjust the PV for the changed scenereo, I forgot to adjust the annual depreciation amount. I recall there was a follow-up question that played off of that answer, and therefore I know I got that one wrong too.