What if everyone who took the SAT guessed on every multiple-choice question?

tokenadult · 07-16-2012, 01:03 PM

SAT Guessing

Guessing on every question is a very bad strategy on the SAT.

Hayacostbh · 07-16-2012, 01:07 PM

But the SAT is slightly curved. So there would have to be some perfect scores in the mix.

01jason20 · 07-16-2012, 01:12 PM

Definitely got a laugh out of me! Very interesting.

tokenadult · 07-16-2012, 01:42 PM

The "curving" of which you speak doesn't guarantee anyone a perfect score (800s on all three sections) by the reasoning of the submitted article.

UDUBHUSKIES · 07-16-2012, 02:24 PM

Something about this article seems a bit off. It seems like a higher percentage than that described get a 2400. Maybe it's just me being sheltered by cc, but i'm not sure. Also, the guy has it wrong. There are 49 MC Writing questions, not 47.

wanderlust731 · 07-16-2012, 02:51 PM

My name is Isabel, i'm a current high school student, I was wandering what are some smaller colleges (have a small class size no more than 5,000), are located in an warmer climate, and have an affordable cost?!

Rob1995 · 07-16-2012, 02:56 PM

^ You might want to ask this in a different topic, but there are some pretty good liberal arts colleges in the midwest that you can look into. How competitive are you looking at?

wanderlust731 · 07-16-2012, 03:06 PM

^ thank you! and not that competitive

cortana431 · 07-16-2012, 03:34 PM

Why is this thread at the top of featured discussions?

wmurphy126 · 07-16-2012, 03:38 PM

Quote:

Something about this article seems a bit off. It seems like a higher percentage than that described get a 2400.

Because the people who get a 2400 don't guess on every single problem... duh.

It isn't "What percentage of people who can answer every single question on the SAT correctly get a perfect score?"... it is "What percentage of people can get a perfect score if they guess every question?". Completely different.

ZombieDante · 07-17-2012, 02:10 AM

Umm okay...? I never thought that people would actually try that.

emberjed · 07-17-2012, 05:28 AM

I don't think that there are a lot of people who guess on every single one. I think that there are a lot more people who start the test in good faith, realize that either it'll be too hard for them or they just don't care, and start guessing from then onward. The people who do guess on every single one, I'd guess, tend to be low achievers who either have a grudge against their parents - or the school system - for making them take it (for philosophical or personal reasons) or just know that their result won't really affect the colleges they'll get into (either because their GPA and ECs are too poor to get them into anything beyond a community college or because they know some art/music schools that they know they'll get into). Most people who fit one of the above categories, though, probably don't waste the time answering any questions rather than just answer them randomly. However, one of my friends, while taking the ACT, filled in the bubbles to, when read sideways, spell out profane words, though since this involved filling in multiple bubbles for some questions and no bubbles for others, the chance of him getting a 36P is zero.

MidwestMom2Kids_ · 07-17-2012, 07:15 AM

In the xkcd.com article, the statement "it’s a statistical certainty that there would be no perfect scores on any of the three sections" is wrong. It is not a statistical certainty. The author provided the non-zero probability of this happening. (Perhaps that author has a better understanding of math than of English.)

rspence · 07-17-2012, 02:12 PM

The number of MC questions on SAT is 67+54+49 = 170. If you guess each one randomly, the probability of getting a perfect score is (1/5)^170 = 1.497*10^-119. The expected number of perfect scores is that, multiplied by the number of test-takers, which is still quite small. However it's not a "statistical certainty."

Flamewire · 07-17-2012, 09:00 PM

Midwestmom2Kids_: Think of it in practical applications. It's not a statistical certainty, but when you calculate it, 1.5*10^-119 is as good as zero. I assure you that the author has a staggering grasp of mathematics and English - if you take some time to read the comics that he writes and posts on his main website, you'd see this instantly. He is a very gifted humorist.

ZombieDante: The beauty of mathematics and sciences is that you can use them to answer questions that cannot be conceived. Look around on the website that OP linked, and you'll see two other questions that are just as ridiculous - "what would happen if a baseball was pitched at .9 times the speed of light" and "how much force can Yoda produce." The regular readers of XKCD comics love these questions; abusing science to answer strange questions is quite entertaining. Of course there is no practical application to the question "What would happen if everyone guessed on every question of the SAT?" - but who cares? That's not the point of this.

Why this was submitted to CC of all places is beyond me. Step away from the literal text that's written there, and just enjoy the math behind it.