bchadwick Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > Advice. At 5 minutes to go, make sure you fill in > all of your guess ovals (I recommend using “D”, > since you won’t get to do it next year). I know Darien’s point, but this comment still made me laugh. If I narrow it down to two answers on Level 2 and one is D, I will favor D. Also, I know I left the morning session a little more than a half hour early on L1, I think I stayed the full time in the afternoon, but finished with like 27 minutes to go which was annoying. And soxboys, don’t sweat the details like this. Just study the material. The proctors will go over all of this stuff on exam day. Just show up on time with a financial calculator, extra battery, a watch to put on your desk, and plenty of pencils.
> And soxboys, don’t sweat the details like this. > Just study the material. The proctors will go over > all of this stuff on exam day. Just show up on > time with a financial calculator, extra battery, a > watch to put on your desk, and plenty of pencils. Thank you for the encouragement! There’s so much information, but I’ve been reviewing and doing questions like crazy and we still have 6 weeks left, plenty of time! 
DarienHacker Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > bchadwick Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Advice. At 5 minutes to go, make sure you fill > in > > all of your guess ovals (I recommend using “D”, > > since you won’t get to do it next year). > > > A shame the LOS don’t cover > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem, > because this directly leads to a better guessing > strategy than one founded on assuming the CFAI, > out of foreseen nostalgia, will lean toward > parking correct answers under the > never-to-be-seen-again “D” choice. > > Here’s what you do. > > 1. Assume contestant role. Randomly pick an > answer. (E.g., number of seconds on your watch > mod 4, map to ) > > 2. Now you’re Monty Hall. You have to “open a > door” which has a goat behind it. This is usually > easy to do – most exam questions will have one or > two answers which are obviously wrong. Identify > that wrong answer, and pretend you’re showing it > to yourself. Draw a light “X” through the known > goat answer if that helps your role play. > > 3. Back to contestant role. Switch your original > answer to one of the remaining 2, as this will > demonstrably improve your likelihood of nailing > the correct answer. > > A marginal improvement, but on exam day we’ll > welcome all the help we can get. > > By the way this explains a lot of the mumbling you > see candidates doing near the end of each 3 hour > session – during step 2 above, many candidates > subconsciously say “Do you want to switch to Door > Number 2” as they finish the MH bit. The Monty Hall trick depends on the fact that MH will never open the door that you’ve already chosen. Once you guess on the exam, there’s no guarantee that your “clearly wrong” answer won’t be the one you’ve already chosen, which spoils the mechanism that improves your chances. Sorry to spoil the fun, but you’re better off eliminating the answers first, and then guessing from the remainder. Aside from the “say goodbye to D” fun, I seem to recall that a surprising number of answers were D in any case, particularly in those Yes/No+Yes/No structured questions. So I’m doing the D thing anyway.
bchadwick Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > The Monty Hall trick depends on the fact that MH > will never open the door that you’ve already > chosen. Once you guess on the exam, there’s no > guarantee that your “clearly wrong” answer won’t > be the one you’ve already chosen, which spoils the > mechanism that improves your chances. Sorry to > spoil the fun, but you’re better off eliminating > the answers first, and then guessing from the > remainder. > > Aside from the “say goodbye to D” fun, I seem to > recall that a surprising number of answers were D > in any case, particularly in those Yes/No+Yes/No > structured questions. So I’m doing the D thing > anyway. Not to mention the Monty Hall problem assumes no knowledge at all about what is behind the doors…I’m assuming we should have some idea as to which is a better ‘guess’ so it’s not a complete game of chance.
Uh I was done about 45 mins early on each portion for L1. Spend the time reviewing, because sitting there staring out into space is boring, and you risk catching someone’s eyes and the ire of an overly excited proctor. Just go over your answers, make sure your eraser-marks won’t generate mistakes, etc etc. If memory serves, you can leave before 30-mins-to-finish. After that you must wait. I finished reviewing for afternoon L1 like 27 mins before time-up… so i got up, had a couple of glasses of water, went to the bathroom, and waited it out.