Trap Answers on actual test??

[Sixcarbs]

Hello,

Just wondering, does the actual test have a lot of trap answers or not? Most of the PQ's here do not.

A trap answer is an answer based on a common mistake that one might come up with. For example, not converting SA to Continuous. If the answer calls for one of them, but has choices for both, that's a trap.

WIth the PQ's here, usually if I mess something up, what I come up with is not a choice, and I know I need to rethink or recrunch my numbers.

Thanks,

Sixcarbs

 

[Detective]

Yes it does. In fact, on some numerical questions if I didn't know how to get the right answer, I purposely employed a wrong method to see if it yielded a choice that I could eliminate. I found on average 4 times out of 5 it did. There is also a tendency for some choices to reflect partial completion. For example, in a binomial tree pricing problem the final answer may be the discounted value, but one of the choices would be the undiscounted value (e.g. only missing the last step to discount back).

Also you might not may be making "common" mistakes because even in BT questions the choices on numerical problems do represent commonly employed wrong approaches from my experience. Granted I too do not make common mistakes when I am wrong, so if I want to quickly eliminate wrong numerical values, I have to take a step back and evaluate the question from a different perspective or point of view (think like Joe Bloggs). This is a lot of effort though, so it's just easier to get the question right with the correct approach. This is just a fun little exercise if you have a lot of time left on the exam and just a few questions left where you do not know the right answer, but at least can eliminate wrong answers.

FWIW in part 1 in May 2019, I felt the questions were not verbose at all and I mostly noticed a tendency for GARP to ask which choice is true rather than which choice is false on the qualitative questions. However, others I know who took exam in the past (e.g. 2016) said they felt the questions were verbose so there may be some temporal changes or personal biases.

 

[Sixcarbs]

Thanks @Detective, all information is helpful.

 

[Detective]

Thanks @Detective, all information is helpful.

Something that helped me personally was BT's formula sheet in the topic review section. I am not a fan of memorizing formulas, and I rather understand, but when pressed for time, whatever works. I perused that document on my commute to work every day the week leading to the exam, and I think it helped me on several questions. I can at least confidently say I cannot recall a formula on the exam required to solve a question that wasn't in that document.

 

[Sixcarbs]

Something that helped me personally was BT's formula sheet in the topic review section. I am not a fan of memorizing formulas, and I rather understand, but when pressed for time, whatever works. I perused that document on my commute to work every day the week leading to the exam, and I think it helped me on several questions. I can at least confidently say I cannot recall a formula on the exam required to solve a question that wasn't in that document.

Would you mind posting a link to that? I can't seem to locate it.

Thanks

 

[Detective]

Would you mind posting a link to that? I can't seem to locate it.

Thanks

https://learn.bionicturtle.com/topic/part-1-formula-sheet/
https://learn.bionicturtle.com/topic/part-2-formula-sheet/

 

[Sixcarbs]

https://learn.bionicturtle.com/topic/part-1-formula-sheet/
https://learn.bionicturtle.com/topic/part-2-formula-sheet/

Wow, now these are formula sheets.