<p>Has “There is not any information to answer this question” ever been a correct answer on the SAT? Is it best to totally disregard that answer?</p>
<p>Yes it has been an answer. However as far as I know it has never been the answer on a level 4 or 5 question. So you can essentially disregard it if it occurs toward the end of the section (although there is always a tiny possibility that one day it will happen).</p>
<p>Hmm, interesting. Whenever I see it, I immediately cross it off. I should be more careful.</p>
<p>How often is it the answer?</p>
<p>Like on 3 question per year?</p>
<p>If life were so easy …</p>
<p>A Study by Reason Prep for Math has these percentages …</p>
<p>A 18.7%
B 21.3%
C 20.7%
D 20.7%
E 18.6%</p>
<p>essentially the same. I wouldn’t expect less from the statisticians at the college board.</p>
<p>Unfortunately there isn’t a big flag that identifies “4” or “5” category questions so even if the statistics differ for these (which I personally doubt) you’ll only know that after you get the answer key.</p>
<p>@fogcity</p>
<p>You misunderstood the OP’s question. The OP is referring to a very specific answer for choice (E).</p>
<p>OP, don’t just cross out an answer no matter how often u find it wrong…
It all depends on the question. Just read the question and understand it… crossing out a choice in advance backfires a lot…</p>
<p>“It cannot be determined from the information given” is almost always wrong. I think I’ve seen it correct once out of the dozens of SATs I’ve worked through. It’s a super trappy answer.</p>
<p>Ya, that’s what I meant to say. I just forgot how its worded, so I made it up, hoping you guys will know what I mean. </p>
<p>Ya, I realize that it is super trappy.</p>
<p>Any tips to recognize them?</p>
<p>Recognize what? Questions where it’s a trap v. questions where it’s legit?</p>
<p>If you look at the question and immediately gravitate towards “It cannot be determined…” or the question is one of the last 10 or so in the section, it’s probably a trap answer. If you solve the question and end up with several possible solutions (and are sure they all work) or something like that then it MIGHT be a legit answer. But I wouldn’t pick it unless I was 100% sure that it couldn’t be determined.</p>
<p>Regarding Dr. Steve’s post, I understood the question. I think it very unwise to “apply” any formula to the answer choices. However you dice the last few occurrences of a specific choice, the next few (totally controlled by the test writers) occurrences of that choice are the ones that matter. Leave the recipes to the cooks.</p>
<p>Even if you were inclined to look for such patterns (and I am not), there’s a problem here: the sample size. How many times has the “E - cannot be determined” answer appeared on actual college board tests? Has it even been 5 in the last 10 years? Maybe 10? Pick any section, look at 10 answers and you will see weird patterns that mean nothing and offer no guidance for the next 10…</p>
<p>On the other hand, “None of the Above” happens to be the title of a great book about the SAT by David Owen.</p>
<p>In short, don’t pick that E simply because you don’t know how to do the problem. Only pick that E if you know how to do the problem and determine that it’s insoluble without more infos.</p>
<p>Pckeller’s good advice notwithstanding, I’ll provide the relevant data from an analysis I did about a year ago, FWIW.</p>
<p>On 24 released tests from March 2005 through May 2012, there were nine occurrences of “E) It cannot be determined from the information given.”</p>
<p>Out of those nine, only one question had a correct answer of E (the test was January, 2008).</p>
<p>Two questions out of nine were L4 and L5, leaving seven as L1 to L3 in difficulty.</p>
<p>@fignewton</p>
<p>I’m curious if you’ve analyzed the data from older SATs as well. As pckeller said, the sample size is really too small to make any conjectures about level 1-3 problems. Even if we go back to the 90s I’m prety certain that this answer choice has never come out correct on a Level 4 or 5 problems, and I’m also pretty sure it has come out a few times on level 1 to 3 problems. But this is coming from my admittedly poor memory.</p>
<p>So if you have any concrete data on the older tests, I think it would be helpful in this situation. The sample size will still be small, but substantially bigger than 9.</p>
<p>I think there is a reason why this type of question does not show up as level 4 or 5 that often. And if we had a big enough sample, I think we probably would see that on level 4 and 5, when “cannot be determined” is one of the choices, it is right less than the 20% of the time that random chance would suggest. </p>
<p>When a test item is constructed and then run through as an item on an experimental section, they have to check two things: what percent of kids get it right AND are the kids who get it right the higher scorers. If on a hard question you make “e, cannot be determined” the right answer , you run the risk that there will be two groups who get it right: the ones who see through to whatever mathematical ambiguity was built in to the question, and the ones who say “damned if I know —no one can do this one”. But there will be a middle group who think about it and then get it wrong. So your question won’t function as it is supposed to. It won’t make distinctions in your test-taking population. So you can’t use that item. It won’t make it through the pre-testing process. But if “cannot be determined” is the wrong answer, it does not cause that same problem. So I think that it will be over-represented as the wrong answer.</p>
<p>But I still think that this is just interesting stuff for the tutors and aficionados to discuss and not useful for actual prep. Because if one of my students asks me “OK, stop with the theory and give me actual instruction: what do I do when I see that answer choice?”, I’m going to say: Do what you are always supposed to do – read the question, think about it, play with numbers, mess around and then do what you think is right! Don’t look outside of the question for voodoo-like guides that will excuse you from the hard work of thinking about the problem and figuring out what’s going on.</p>