This is probably the area I have spent the most time on and got knowwhere fast. So thought I would post here too see if anybody has any external links or advice on how to answer these questions. I feel like just knowing the formulas for these questions doesnt help at all. If I dont get it by now should I just move on? I don’t want to waste to much more time otherwise I will neglect the last month I have. Thanks in advance.
Just count the number of LOS in the entire curriculum. I think they about 500+, the # of questions is 240, so on average, each LOS has less than 1/2 ocurrence. In my opinion, the range of questions that one LOS could be tested goes from 0 to 2 which means that a given LOS can not be tested or even tested in 2 questions, but not more.
Let’s say that Prob Rules are tested twice on the real exam. That is 2/240 realtive certain fail = 0.83% loss in total score. If you lucky there is only 1 question, the loss is the half.
If it is too complicated to master, just go and save other LOS that can be mastered, your certain score goes up.
Using probabilities are good for strategy, so try to cheer up with them.
The rules in theory never make sense to me. What does make sense is when I calculate the probability in my head. Definitely punting this LOS for the exam, hoping I can guess and check my way into the right answer.
I find it helpful for probability to define events A and B (Actually write it out), then just plug and play with the forumlas:
For example, these are the 4 things you will generally need to identify from a problem.
A= event that you are hungry
B= event that there is food in the house
A|B = event you are hungry given there food in the house
B|A = event there is food in the house given that you are hungry
Then stop thinking about the concenptual nature of teh problem and just use the formulas.
dwheats, good examples.
HJC, if you are still struggling, I would recommend not spending an inordinate amount of time going over this (or any) particular topic. There are only about 3 more weeks to go before the E-day.
If you can, try to find somebody who can teach you this concept. If that is not possible, you might be better off spending time on practice exams and EOC questions.
BullishBear Finance