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iPen
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If you get all hard questions correct but bomb the easy ones = 800? Updated on: 02 Jul 2015, 09:24
Originally posted by iPen on 02 Jul 2015, 09:07.
Last edited by iPen on 02 Jul 2015, 09:24, edited 2 times in total.
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Out of curiosity, if you get all of the hard questions correct but bomb the easy ones, does that mean that you can still get an 800? This is a bit extreme but sometimes you may find yourself getting the easy ones wrong because you thought too much about it, or went too fast because you thought it was easy.

I read a post on here somewhere that your score is like how the game 20 Questions figures out what you're thinking. So, if you keep getting the hard questions right, then you should score well into the 700's. But, if you keep getting the easy questions wrong,you'd be prompted for mostly the easy/medium questions. However, if you keep getting some or all of the medium questions right, then hard questions are headed your way... then wouldn't the scoring structure go like this:

"If you get the easy questions wrong, then you should probably get the medium questions wrong so let's test medium level questions to make sure. If you get the medium questions wrong, then let's stick with easy and medium level questions. However, if you do get the medium questions right, then maybe it's a guess but we'll throw in some hard questions to make sure. If candidate gets the hard questions wrong, then let's ask more easy/medium questions. If candidate gets hard questions right, let's ask more hard level questions to make sure. If at the end the candidate gets all the hard questions right but gets all the easy questions wrong... candidate must be in the 700-800 range, because hard questions trump easy questions (binary tie break like the 20 Questions game, as opposed to averaging the scores or giving more weight to the hard ones)."

^ Is that the idea?

If that is the idea, then maybe GMAC should just give us an option to take a hard-level-only exam, so as to make the exam shorter and "cut to the chase" for those of who are confident (or crazy...) enough to take it. If you get a sufficient number of questions right, you'll be in the 700-800 range. If not, then all you know is that you're not in the 700+ range, even if you'd score a 690 on the regular exam.
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If you get all hard questions correct but bomb the easy ones = 800? 02 Jul 2015, 09:23
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youre off base here dude. If you get the easy questions wrong the gmat isn't going to throw medium level questions at you at all. It will keep throwing easy ones until you get them right consistently.
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If you get all hard questions correct but bomb the easy ones = 800? Updated on: 02 Jul 2015, 09:38
Originally posted by iPen on 02 Jul 2015, 09:25.
Last edited by iPen on 02 Jul 2015, 09:38, edited 1 time in total.
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youre off base here dude. If you get the easy questions wrong the gmat isn't going to throw medium level questions at you at all. It will keep throwing easy ones until you get them right consistently.
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But what if the experimental questions are medium/difficult, and you get those few right? It's not consistent enough to prompt more medium/hard questions, since the exp. q's may be spread out in the exam as opposed to being consecutive?

And, what if you're prompted with a random medium/hard question to start off? Or, is it always an easy level question at the beginning? I can see how it would be an easy question to start off because if it's a hard question at the beginning, then you'll only be asked hard questions throughout the exam and the amount of time spent per question > than easy/medium questions, so you may not even finish the exam (3+ hours of hard questions - yikes!).

Conversely, why not ask a hard question at the beginning? If you get it right, GMAC may have already thought that asking consistently hard questions is unfair if the first question is hard, so they may vary it a bit to essentially cap off the number of hard questions no matter how many hard questions you get right, so as to balance out the time. If you get the hard questions right up until say, question 30 in quantitative, and you leave the 31-37 blank because you run out of time... is your score heavily penalized? That wouldn't necessarily make sense to me...
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If you get all hard questions correct but bomb the easy ones = 800? 02 Jul 2015, 09:37
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youre off base here dude. If you get the easy questions wrong the gmat isn't going to throw medium level questions at you at all. It will keep throwing easy ones until you get them right consistently.

But what if the experimental questions are medium/difficult, and you get those few right? It's not consistent enough to prompt more medium/hard questions?

And, what if you're prompted with a random medium/hard question to start off? Or, is it always an easy level question at the beginning?
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You do know the purpose of the experimental questions? It's to help the testmaker determine the appropriate level of difficulty. Which means that those experimental questions you see arent "assigned" a difficulty at all because they haven't been determined yet.

And you most likely aren't going to be prompted an easy questions at first. You're prompted a medium level question. If you get that wrong you'll see a downward shift. If you get it right you'll see an upward shift. The Gmat is never going to test you at a high level if it doesnt think you belong at a high level. You have to "earn" your way there. If you think about the purpose of the adaptive cat, its designed to probe your true testtaking level on a precise scale. Throwing a difficult question at a novice isnt going to test for much. If the novice gets it right, it is probably luck. If the novice gets it wrong, then that was expected and now the test just wasted 1 question confirming what it already knew.
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If you get all hard questions correct but bomb the easy ones = 800? 02 Jul 2015, 09:41
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youre off base here dude. If you get the easy questions wrong the gmat isn't going to throw medium level questions at you at all. It will keep throwing easy ones until you get them right consistently.

But what if the experimental questions are medium/difficult, and you get those few right? It's not consistent enough to prompt more medium/hard questions?

And, what if you're prompted with a random medium/hard question to start off? Or, is it always an easy level question at the beginning?

You do know the purpose of the experimental questions? It's to help the testmaker determine the appropriate level of difficulty. Which means that those experimental questions you see arent "assigned" a difficulty at all because they haven't been determined yet.

And you most likely aren't going to be prompted an easy questions at first. You're prompted a medium level question. If you get that wrong you'll see a downward shift. If you get it right you'll see an upward shift. The Gmat is never going to test you at a high level if it doesnt think you belong at a high level. You have to "earn" your way there. If you think about the purpose of the adaptive cat, its designed to probe your true testtaking level on a precise scale. Throwing a difficult question at a novice isnt going to test for much. If the novice gets it right, it is probably luck. If the novice gets it wrong, then that was expected and now the test just wasted 1 question confirming what it already knew.
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ok, I see. I edited my last response since but it looks like you answered my question. Thanks.

Though, maybe it's still a good idea that GMAC offers a hard-level-only test in the interest of a shorter exam.
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If you get all hard questions correct but bomb the easy ones = 800? 02 Jul 2015, 09:54
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I think the best way for the GMAC to cut down on the length of the exam is to get rid of the useless IR and AWA sections hah. But if they're never going to do that I doubt they're going to touch the core quant and verbal sections.
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If you get all hard questions correct but bomb the easy ones = 800? 03 Jul 2015, 06:59
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Most of the explanations of the scoring algorithm that you'll read are not correct - they're dramatic oversimplifications of how the algorithm actually works. In many books, you'll find a 'tree diagram', and the '20 questions' analogy you post above is a variation on that diagram. Neither description is accurate. I dislike those kinds of explanations, because they make it seem that the GMAT is based on some simplistic "if/then algorithm" that someone just made up. And when people think the algorithm works that way, naturally they think there might be ways to "beat the algorithm" by figuring out how it works. None of that is true.

I've been meaning to write up a careful and precise description of how the algorithm works, but it would take me more time than I have right now. But in brief, GMAT scoring is based on a field of academic research that has been in existence for more than fifty years. It has a rigorous mathematical basis in probability theory. For each question on the test, the algorithm knows (from data collected when the question was used as an experimental question) the probability test-takers at each level will give a correct answer. Essentially, for each question, the algorithm has a graph, which maps ability against the probability of a right answer (if you want to see what these graphs look like, you can google 'Item Characteristic Curve' and look at any of the images). So when you finish the test, the algorithm knows what questions you got right and wrong, and knows the probabilities test takers at each level would have answered those questions correctly and incorrectly, and from there, using some heavy math, it works out your most probable ability level.

To answer your original question, the probability an 800-level will answer a 200-level question correctly will be extremely high - probably something like 99.9%. So it's very unlikely an 800-level test taker will answer one easy question incorrectly, and astronomically unlikely he or she will answer two or more of them incorrectly. The algorithm would simply never think that a test taker answering two 200-level questions incorrectly is an 800-level test taker, because 800-level test takers essentially never do that.
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If you get all hard questions correct but bomb the easy ones = 800? 04 Jul 2015, 20:49
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Most of the explanations of the scoring algorithm that you'll read are not correct - they're dramatic oversimplifications of how the algorithm actually works. In many books, you'll find a 'tree diagram', and the '20 questions' analogy you post above is a variation on that diagram. Neither description is accurate. I dislike those kinds of explanations, because they make it seem that the GMAT is based on some simplistic "if/then algorithm" that someone just made up. And when people think the algorithm works that way, naturally they think there might be ways to "beat the algorithm" by figuring out how it works. None of that is true.

I've been meaning to write up a careful and precise description of how the algorithm works, but it would take me more time than I have right now. But in brief, GMAT scoring is based on a field of academic research that has been in existence for more than fifty years. It has a rigorous mathematical basis in probability theory. For each question on the test, the algorithm knows (from data collected when the question was used as an experimental question) the probability test-takers at each level will give a correct answer. Essentially, for each question, the algorithm has a graph, which maps ability against the probability of a right answer (if you want to see what these graphs look like, you can google 'Item Characteristic Curve' and look at any of the images). So when you finish the test, the algorithm knows what questions you got right and wrong, and knows the probabilities test takers at each level would have answered those questions correctly and incorrectly, and from there, using some heavy math, it works out your most probable ability level.

To answer your original question, the probability an 800-level will answer a 200-level question correctly will be extremely high - probably something like 99.9%. So it's very unlikely an 800-level test taker will answer one easy question incorrectly, and astronomically unlikely he or she will answer two or more of them incorrectly. The algorithm would simply never think that a test taker answering two 200-level questions incorrectly is an 800-level test taker, because 800-level test takers essentially never do that.
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I see, thanks for the info.

Hypothetically speaking, then, if I get all of the hard questions right, I won't be stuck with just really hard questions? So, the GMAT will throw in easy/medium questions for everyone and essentially there's a cap on the number of hard questions given to all test takers, since GMAT's algorithm can sufficiently determine your difficulty level based on a minimum set of hard questions. Otherwise, an exam full of 700+ level questions is going to be mentally taxing, to say the least...
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