Don't Be Afraid to Guess!

Every student believes he or she is a terrible guesser. Fortunately, this dogma with respect to guessing on exams is misplaced. Ever since that very first wrong guess on a second grade spelling pre-test students have convinced themselves that if they guess, it will most likely be the wrong choice. Why? Because we tend to remember only those questions which we guessed incorrectly. How many times will a test taker silently say to himself, "I knew it was A, why did I choose B?" Our minds like to revise history. When we review an exam a week later, we don't dwell on the correct answers (even if we had to guess the correct answer). The mind assures us that we "knew" that correct answer all along. We only admonish ourselves for guessing a wrong answer. This is the same reason why dialed wrong numbers are never busy. When we dial a wrong number and receive a busy signal, we think its the correct number-- that the person we want to reach is already on the phone. It is only when an unfamiliar voice picks up and says, "hello" that we realize that we have in fact dialed the wrong number. In the long run if you can pare down 5 answer choices to 2, you will answer 50% of those remaining choices correctly and 50% of the others incorrectly. Unfortunately, we tend only to remember the bad 50%. There is no conspiracy theory working here. The only conspiracy theory is the one in your mind.