proximity answers in the multiple choice sometimes, incidence, one, structure

trogulj

I have a general question on the test structure...

Does the CFAI sometimes put "proximity answers" in the multiple choice section? I calculated answers on 1 or 2 questions, which were very close to one of the MC answers but not equal to it. It was not a rounding issue. Either I missed the problem or the CFAI placed a "proximity answer" so you couldn't just plug and chug looking for a calculation that matched one of the MC answers.

I remember having multiple incidence (3 or 4 questions) of this on L2 last year, which leads me to believe the CFAI may use "proximity answers". Or who knows maybe they don't and I'm fishing. Frankly I don't care what they do, I just want my designation and I want to move on...

malbec

I know at least in one PM question the CFAI included an answer that was very close to a short way of calculating the answer and a second that was an exact match to the complete calculation. I did the short answer at first and when revisiting the question tried the complete approach.

After this and a couple of questions were I was very very confident of doing the right thing and could not match the numbers I reason that CFAI does test multiple LOS in one question. If you have never thought about the other concept being related to the one you could remember these questions are likely to be very hard to answer. In the Bloom depth of knowledge semantic such questions usually test for synthesis and evaluation rather then for simple analysis.

wake2000

I agree.

Don't recall feeling this way at L1, but L2 and L3 both had me perplexed at least couple of times because I was 100% confident about what I was doing but couldn't match the exact numbers.

I think it's one of the many exam tricks up their sleeves to see how easily they can derail a well-prepared candidate.

bolligerallstar

I think that is why they often use the "closest to" convention, which can be frustrating.

More nefariously, it is apparent that most of the numerical choices are answers that a candidate moving quickly would calculate by making only one small mistake. I think that is why people at all levels think immediately after the test that the test was "easy" and then are shocked at the results!