Yay

Yay the pros are over, now I can blog all I want! Ever since I received some compliments (ok lar one or two only) about my blog, I’m seized by the urge to blog again. I’m surprised and also very very touched that some of you actually read my blog just before the pros. Had I known earlier I would have posted this entry sooner. Actually I was in a blog reading frenzy too in the last few weeks, blogs of people I know or of complete strangers, not because of a morbid need to read about how hard people have been mugging but because when you’re supposed to be mugging you end up doing all sorts of ridiculous things. For me, I cut my dog’s hair, hold lengthy one-sided conversations with her, watch boring tv shows and read many many blogs. And now when I have all the time in the world, I’m just flabbergasted at why I’ve wasted time doing these things when I could have mugged up my Candida albicans, but let’s not go there now.

Ok I forgot what I want to blog about liao. Was it about my dog, about Europe trip (Yay!), about my science center days… …? Oh ya it was about True/False mcqs. Anyway those topics I listed are stuff I’m going to blog about. Eventually. If I remember.

I’ve always wondered about the odds of guessing at True/False questions, in a purely mathematical sense, without any confounding factors like the talent of making lousy guesses. But I’m too lazy to figure things out for myself and frankly, I HATE maths so I’ve returned all my stats stuff to Chan Yew Fok. Most of you won’t know him but I’m mentioning his name here cos I simply adore it.

So I decide to enlist the help of a statistician, ok more like an accountant-wannabe and a self proclaimed F maths whiz, to calculate the outcome. To my utmost surprise, he really did! And it’s presented in neat tables and shows how different scenarios (how many guesses) can affect the number of marks awarded, taking into account the probability of each correct answer. Self proclaimed maths whiz (let’s call him SPMW) then proceeds to explain each and every detailed step in his calculation but I switched off as usual and only caught some phrases like probability trees and I forgot what else. Sorry but all I could think of was “wah this SPMW must really like maths, or is really bored�.

Here is the conclusion:
When 0 is known, guess all(duh!). When 1 is known, guess remaining 4(hmmm). When 2 are known, it is best to guess the rest(is that wise?). When 3 or more are known, don’t waste time guessing.

Disclaimer: This tried-and-failed method has been tried out by this blogger and as I’ve mentioned, it is a tried-and-failed method.

Ok I just realize this whole entry is quite pointless, but who cares, I typed it out already.