68 vs 86-98

A short story that I hope you will find entertaining...

So today my friend Seth and I studied for our stats final together. We had planned to take the final at 8 tonight which would give us 2 hours to finish. We both thought that such an amount of time would be adequate considering previous tests in that class. However, when 8 rolled around we turned to each other and both agreed that neither of us were quite ready to undertake such a task...I thought of possibly taking the test Monday morning...but then, I really really really wanted to get it out of the way tonight like I had planned. I had not yet taken any of my finals and it would have been nice to get one out of the way today...also, if I waited till Monday I would have to recharge my short term memory banks once again. :(

We both decided that an extra 30 minutes would be most benificial to our study time and that would leave us, if not an ample amount of time in which to actually "take" the test, what Goldylocks might say "just right."

We were wrong. We actually didn't make it to the testing center 'till 9 (a fact which neither of us quite noticed until several minutes into the test), and when 9:30 rolled around I couldn't help but use my excellent math skills to realize that I would NOT finish by 10 (the time the testing center closes) at my current test-taking rate.

This was slightly disconcerting.

All said and done, the feeling of being rushed to finish a test (a final at that) is not one that I would wish upon anyone. Oh how I lament my decision to not wait until Monday. And yet all said and done...I suppose the end result was not that bad.
Having guessed on nearly half the questions I think a 68% is quite impressive. Especially considering the fact that if 40% of my answers were guesses from questions that involved 4 option multiple choice (giving me a 25% probability of choosing the correct answer)...lets see, if I do my math right...that means that of the roughly 40% i guessed on I would likely get 25% of that 40% right by chance...meaning of that 40% of the test I probobly got 10% right. (are you still with me???)

Ok, so lets subtract that 10% from my 68% score to see how I did on the 60% that I didn't guess on...

Ok, so that means I only missed 2% of the 60% I didn't guess on...basically giving me a 98% on the part I actually did!
Wow, way to go me!!!

What??? You don't think I did that well? Ok, well lets see how well I would have done if I only guessed on 30% of my test:

25% of 30% = 7.5% (meaning of the 30% I guessed on I most likely (according to probability) would have gotten 7.5% right)

so, 68% (my score) - 7.5% (the amount i likely was awarded due to chance guessing) = 60.5% (the score of the remaining 70% that I didn't guess on).

well 60.5 / 70 = 86

So even if I answered 70 percent of the test and only guessed on 30% (which...I'm pretty sure I guessed for more of the test than that...) I had aan 86% coming my way.

So...chances are...if I would have been able to actually finish the test without guessing for any part of it, I would have gotten a score somewhere between an 86% and 98% (considering i did as well on the rest of the test as I had on the portion of the test I actually did.)

and the moral of the story is:
Give yourself more than an hour to take your stats final.