Introduction

Have you ever guessed on a multiple choice exam? If you have, have you ever wondered what your chances of guessing the correct answer were? This project investigates this interesting question.

Multiple choice exams are very common as they are easy to administer and mark. These exams can cover a large amount of material, as it is possible to fit 50+ questions into a 1 hour exam (Adsit 2003). Lastly, they can be quickly marked by the teacher as they require only reading a single letter for each question.

However, multiple choice exams have their downsides. Students, without any knowledge of the material, can guess on a question and get it correct. It is also difficult to create good “distractors”. Distractors are wrong answers that distract from the correct answer. However, having a large number of questions on an exam and having a sufficient number of answer choices will significantly reduce flukes, therefore making these exams more effective (Adsit 2003).

To further prevent flukes, it is suggested that at least 4 answer choices should be used for each question on the exam (Adsit 2003). The chances of guessing the answer correctly will be 25% or lower depending on the number of answer choices. Having less than 4 answer choices will increase the chances of a fluke occurring, where a fluke is defined as a student getting the question correct without any knowledge of the material being examined.

In this investigation, the student will purely guess on all of the multiple choice exam questions. The number of exam questions and the number of answer choices will be manipulated. Lastly, a correct answer gets 1 mark, while a wrong answer gets 0 marks.