I also remember reading and using this information when taking the SAT, so it surprises me that Yvain’s classmates wouldn’t take the free points. My best guess, unfounded except for intuition, is that the something-for-nothing aspect triggered a “this can’t be!” feeling. Or something. Yeah I dunno, as far as I remember everyone I talked to about this in high school was fine with guessing after eliminating a choice.
A third data point in agreement: in my HS it was repeatedly drilled into us (by the official prep materials, by teachers, by everyone) that you should always guess.
Although otiose to adduce further examples, I will still mention that ~5 years ago, my SAT prep book made it very clear that you could always eliminate some of the choices and thus that you always wanted to guess.
Well, the book I read also emphasized that even if you had no clue, you still couldn’t lose anything by guessing; on average it would just come out the same as if you left it blank, so you might as well give it a try.
But I can certainly understand why this is easier to get in the context of a 4- or 5-answer question than 2. To understand the true/false case, you need to understand at least a little about calibrated probabilities.
I also remember reading and using this information when taking the SAT, so it surprises me that Yvain’s classmates wouldn’t take the free points. My best guess, unfounded except for intuition, is that the something-for-nothing aspect triggered a “this can’t be!” feeling. Or something. Yeah I dunno, as far as I remember everyone I talked to about this in high school was fine with guessing after eliminating a choice.
A third data point in agreement: in my HS it was repeatedly drilled into us (by the official prep materials, by teachers, by everyone) that you should always guess.
Although otiose to adduce further examples, I will still mention that ~5 years ago, my SAT prep book made it very clear that you could always eliminate some of the choices and thus that you always wanted to guess.
Well, the book I read also emphasized that even if you had no clue, you still couldn’t lose anything by guessing; on average it would just come out the same as if you left it blank, so you might as well give it a try.
But I can certainly understand why this is easier to get in the context of a 4- or 5-answer question than 2. To understand the true/false case, you need to understand at least a little about calibrated probabilities.