Our fates in school and beyond are decided by quizzes, finals exams, driving tests and professional exams. Although test makers try to put the correct answers in random order, they fall into patterns. You can use that to get an edge when you have to guess a tough question.
Favour "true" on a true-false test
Ideally the items on such a test should stand a 50-50 chance of being true. Actually, true answers are rather more common. In a sample of 100 tests from schools, colleges, government and other sources, 56 per cent of the correct answers were found to be "true". It's not hard to imagine why. Remembering a fact is easier than inventing a falsehood. Test makers follow the path of least resistance and so produce an excess of trues.
Bet on an answer key that skips
Answer keys to both true-false and multiple-choice tests tend to alternate rather more than in a truly random sequence. Therefore, a true answer is disproportionately likely to be followed by a false one; a multiple-choice answer (such as C, when it is the third of five options) is unlikely to be correct two times in a row. This fact should guide your guessing. So, when you are guessing, choose an answer different from the previous question's known correct answer.
Avoid "never"; but "none" can be OK
A popular bit of advice says you should avoid answers that include never, always, all or none. These universal qualifiers almost inevitably convert a true statement into a false one. Consider what a slog it is to create multiple choices. The tester has to write several wrong answers for every right one.
Quick recipes for falsehoods get used a lot, and this is one. The rule of avoiding these qualifiers works well – except for "None of the above", which is often right.
Eliminate the outliers
The test maker's goal is to conceal the correct answer by surrounding it with plausible alternatives ("distractors"). Suppose these are the choices: (A) day lilies; (B) white mice; (C) pea plants; (D) beans. Deduce the answer without the question*. Ask yourself which of these answers doesn't belong. Most would say white mice, the only animal. Now a little reverse-engineering: if white mice were correct, why would the test maker invent three distractors that involved plants – throwing the correct answer into sharp relief? It would then make more sense to supply animals as distractors. But that didn't happen.
Of the remaining answers, two are edible and one is not. By similar logic, day lilies is an outlier and is least likely to be correct. This leaves pea plants and beans. All the choices are two words except for beans. That makes beans an outlier and leaves pea plants as the best guess – the answer best camouflaged by distractors.
This article was originally published in October 2014 and has been updated ahead of this year's GCSE exams. It should be noted this article is for guidance only and should not be used as gospel. Not all tests will follow these patterns.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
