The Answer
At Balloon Juice, Doug Harlan J wrote
I’ve seen posters around for Kaplan test prep where it lists a bunch of answers and says “if you think you have to know the question to know the answer, you need to visit Kaplan”.
That is the correct answer. The question is after the jump.
The question is why aren’t our leaders reality based ? Why don’t they care about facts. Why are they so cynical ? Why do they worship savviness ? The explanation of the answer is that Kaplan teaches people how to make it into the elite and teaches them to be cynical.
My comment.
ou’ve nailed it ! “if you think you have to know the question to know the answer, you need to visit Kaplan” is the greatest catch ever. Of course it should go on “if you know you don’t need to know the question to know the answer, you might be qualified to write for the opinion pages for our Newspaper subsidiary.”
For every X, the correct answer is “opinions on X differ. Both sides have a point.” If one gets distracted by X and related facts, one can’t write a properly ballanced column.
Seriously, I think that the fact that Kaplan keeps the Post afloat and the Post makes it impossible to eliminate the Kaplan U boondoggle is just a coincidence. But I really don’t think it is a coincidence that the elite has ceased to be reality based when Kaplan figured out how to game the test which is used to decide who to admit to the universities which select the elite.
I’ve never tried to choose the answer without knowing the question. I have the following guesses as to how to do it. First, there are two similar answers and one is correct. The idea is n clearly wrong answers so that medium apt test takers can tell they are wrong, then two from which only highly apt test takers can chose.
Having done some SAT tutoring I find that gaming the test as pushed by entities like Kaplan usually works against test takers. They’ll skip easy questions because they think they look hard, rather than actually being hard. They’ll narrow down their choices to two or three possible answers and then reliably fall for the wrong one, because they don’t have a clue, and the people designing the test do. I’ve watched students thrash around working out which answer makes the most sense when compared with the other answers, often conducting intricate analsyses that take longer than simply solving the problem. In fact, the Kaplan approach encourages students to do anything and everything rather than simply figure out the answer.
Of course, there is a reason the Washington Post and so many others in the media fall for this. The simple right answer goes against the politics of the people who own the newspaper and just about everything else. Who can blame them? They have to eat.
Only two comments?
OK, here are the answers:
A) E = ma^2
B) E = mb^2
C) E = mc^2
D) delta(E) = delta(m)c^2
E) F = ma^2
😉
Min,
Go for the long one…D. What was the question again? 🙂
About the only gaming to be had is to take lots of practice tests to 1) get used to the test format and time pressure and 2) reduce the test anxiety. I also told my eldest to expect to take the tests twice. Now my daughter will be coming up and we will be getting her ready for them (twice)
My other advice. If you don’t know the right answer get rid of the obvious wrong ones. If you get it down to two, guessing will help you. And to make it random. If the question is odd take the higher one (A over C) if even take the lower one (C over A).
And these are high stakes tests. The difference in tuition at one school we looked at was $13,400 PER Year between a 29 and 30 on the ACT (assuming you were in the top 15% of your class).
Islam will change
I think that the answers may have been
a) q
b) p implies q
c) not p
d) not q
e) none of the above
or e) all of the above
Either way e must be false. c and a imply b so, if only one answer is correct, it must be b.
I definitely think it is best to read the answers first before reading the question and certainly before solving it. I’ve always had the impression that the correct answer was obvious (except for “why is the sky blue” asked on a test I took in 9th grade). I must be wrong, since I don’t get the highest possible score.
Since if b is correc a is correct and sinc