For example, LOS 7.a says “Contrast traditional and behavioral finance perspective on investment decision making.” The last two pages are about Bayes’s Formula, which is not mentioned in the LOS at all–would it be reasonable to just ignore this then?
No. From the experience of getting screwed by the cfai, don’t trust the los as the extent of what you need to know. Plenty of evilness happens when the los never says calculate and bam it shows up on the exam I’m telling you, just know everything. The only thing is unless the curriculum explicitly says it won’t be on the exam, or some ridiculous formula like kurtosis.
The vaguely formulated LOSes are the CFAIs dirty way to make you fail.
Yes, if you rigorously follow the LOSes you will fail…
For example: the micro and macro attribution LOS asks you to “demonstrate, justify and contrast”. In real world, you would get a numeric table and have to disect the performance into its components.
If the LOS states “distinguish fruit from vegetables”, you HAVE to know every single fact about the vegetables and fruit because the question will not be “tomato is a fruit or vegetable?” but rather “which of the following has the smallest seed: apple, pear, potatoe, star fruit…”.
Everything in the book is part of an LOS unless it’s in the non-required sections. Bayes forumla is part of traditional finance decision making.