I wish we will all pass and then we can start studying for Level II 
I donât think you understand Angoff quite right. Letâs say there are three questions on the exam, A, B, C. A is really easy so the standard setters believe that 90% of minimally qualified CFAâs will get it. The 90% is called the Angoff weight. B is harder so the Angoff weight is 50%. C is really hard so the Angoff weight is 10%. If eaach question is worth 3 points, the passing score on the exam would be 3*0.9 + 3*0.5 + 3*0.1 = 4.5. Now you take the test and Angoff has nothing to do with how the test is scored. If you get questions B, C correct, you get 6 points and pass the exam (which has a passing score of 4.5). So anyway, if you get a hard question right, thatâs really good because that hard question didnât raise the passing score by much but you got full credit for it so your score jumps a lot. The flipside is that missing easy questions is really bad. I also completely disagree with that snippet that says that Angoff was used for Level 1 starting in 1996. CFAI (actually AIMR then) was pretty hush-hush about how they determiined the minimum passing score then but I didnât hear any mention of Angoff until many years after that. Iâm pretty sure I would have heard about it from someone. In some past life, I was an empirical scientist. The whole basis for empirical science is that you donât know anything except that which can be observed. Then a bunch of psychometricians come along (a group I have very little respect for since I was one of them once) and says that the way to score an exam is to have some expert tell us what percent of minimally qualified caandidates can answer a particular question. Thatâs the antithesis of empirical science. Who cares what he thinks? Let a bunch of people take the exam and assume that the populations that take the exams every year are about the same. Then differences in scoring each year are due to differences in the exam not the peole taking the exam. Then curve the exam accordingly. I am completely, 100% convinced that my way makes more sense than their way. In fact, I think Angoff is inconsistent with pretty much our whole epistemology of science and it is something that only a psychometrician could like (the problem with psychometricians is that they are pseudo-quants - even the most well-respected psychometricans in the country know far less math and stats than a run of the mill quant at a hedge fund or investment bank) Edit: BTW - What do you think about an Angoff weight below 33% on a multiple choice exam with 3 choices?
Great point. My roommate and I went to the same B School with the same major and took the same classes. He couldnât figure out how a 3 option multiple choice exam that only required roughly 70% could be difficult. I guess you have to experience it to know for yourself.
Yeah, the 3-option thing came in a few years back based on some really silly logic. I couldnât and still canât understand why they did it. No matter what a bunch of psychometricians say, it seems intuitive to most people that a multiple choice test with 4 options is harder to pass by luck than one with 3 options. I think the exam lost some credibility by that change and what it gained was really trivial (itâs easier to write questions as if thatâs a huge concern - send me the a copy of the test, give me two days and I will come up with a plausible but incorrect answer for every question).
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Possible, but I think that would just be more indicative of the difficulty of the test itself. If only about 40% of the people taking the exam can get the â58â, or other low passing score, then I would think that says itâs a pretty difficult exam and not necessarily lose cred.
Yeah, what was the basic logic? Are you familiar with the basis of why they went from 4 to 3?
thanks you SIR for the clarification! You right, I misunderstood the concept. It is a bit more reassuring the way you presented it. Hopefully I understood the material and exam questions better than the modified angoff!
I respectfully disagree that with 3 choices it is easierâŚyeah probability wise yesâŚBut, if you look at the questions, you can see that with 4 choices, with some understanding of the question and reading, you will end up with looking at 2 choices to decide the right one, because with 4 choices one choice will have the kind of same wrong explanation as with the first one you eliminated, making it a two choice decision. So, my experience (limited compared to Joeâs for sure) is 3 and 4 is almost the same difficultyâŚ
First off, I didnât suffer that much taking CFA exams. And Iâve spent way more time helping other people pass their CFA exams than I ever did passing mine, so the notion that I somehow want other people to suffer as I did is just totally off-base. I do care about the credibility of the CFA credential. All I have is anecdotal data, but if you share with people that you might have to get a 58% on a multiple choice exam with only 3 choices people think that sounds pretty easy, even if that might not be the case. The not totally flawed logic goesâŚOK, you get 33% by chance alone then to pass you only need to know an additional 25% of the material so that means you really only need to get a 25% to pass this exam. In just about any body of knowledge getting the first 25% is pretty easy. That means that all a CFA charter shows is that someone learned the first 25% of material that is surely not the most difficult material in finance. I hate that kind of argument and hate having to rebut it. Why does CFAI do that to all of us when they could just add a fourth multiple choice option and make the exam like SATâs, GREâs, GMATâs, LSATâs, Series [blah] exams, (and probably a bunch of other exams I have never looked at)? Saving effort in test construction doesnât move me at all. Constructing this test is just not that hard and CFAI gets tons of money for it. There is no way that moving from four choices to three âmaintains the value of the designationâ. There is just not one thinking person on the planet who thinks that makes the exam harder or more relevant. I completely support having an ever-changing curriculum that responds to new developments. You should know that adding things like IFRS vs GAAP also involves getting rid of things (e.g., pooled interest vs purchase accounting for mergers). I personally think that the CFA program needs to get with the times and put more stuff on the exams about credit derivatives and credit in general. You can reasonably be a CFA charterholder and know next to nothing about how CDS function for example when the CDS market is two or three times the size of the US GDP. That seems significantly more important to me than some of the FSA minutia.
If one incorrect answer choice is eliminated from each question and all else is equal, candidate scores will become more random. This is a completely logical conclusion.
I donât think you just need to be sure about 25% questions as suggested by Oyster. Suppose X is the percentage of questions you need to be sure about and 70% is the passing rate, we can develop the following equation 0.7 = X + (1-X)/3 [you have 1/3 chance only among the question you are not sure about] 0.7 = X + 0.333 â 0.333X 0.7 â 0.333 = 0.777X 0.367 = 0.777X X = 0.367/0.777 = 47% You need to be sure about roughly half of the questions. However, if you increase the options the figure jumps to 60% and it makes the test difficult for sure. There are many questions where you are trapped to select wrong answers and this biases the chance factor.
are you sure about that equation? someone else calculated it on the forum and it was closer to 55% of questions that you had to be certain about. (x - 0.33x = 0.67x)
(x - 0.33x = 0.67x) reduces to 1-0.33 = 0.67. What is this meant to show? In any case, is it really useful for you to know whether you need to be sure of 47% or 55% of the answers?
No, not really. Who cares? Either you answered enough right or you didnât . What the number is doesnât really matter at the end of the day. I wish they would just tell us, but they donât.
You knowâŚthere are some ways of finding out what the passing score was on previous exams. CFAI has not always been as careful about protecting that information as they should be. If you look hard enough, you can find some really reliable information like minutes from the meetings at CFA Institute in which they decided the passing scoresâŚJust sayingâŚ
I was disgusted at changing from 4 choices to 3. And to throw more salt on, I recall that the first L1 exam where it happened, the pass rate jumped to the mid 40âs for L1 which was clearly a deviation and huge surge in pass rate from years prior. But ultimately, as long as they keep L2 and L3 hella hard, I suppose there is no risk of dilution. From a business perspective though it makes total sense. Give people a nibble of the pie for free at L1 and it keeps them coming for more. More test takers = more admission revenue = more CFA awareness = more $$$ = power and control = even more $$$$$
i second that. levels 2 and 3 must be really hard i suppose.
Level 2 is the hardest, Level 3, i was told, is a walk in park! Most people who pass Level 1 donât go further than that, Most people who pass level 2 will eventually reach the finish line.
L2 is easier than L3, in my opinion. L2 material is dry and uninteresting, but if you know the material, you will pass. L3 can screw you with subjective questions.
L3 is a walk in the park? Who told you that? I mostly agree with ohai - I found L2 to be eaiser than L3 because there were well-defined answers to questions. L3 has lots of questions that are not just subjective but answers with which I disagree with the official answer. That meaans you have to try to understnd the CFAI philosophy behind some of their answers to get them right. Anyway, weâll talk about that on the LIII forum in a couple of years.