Hacker News Reader

Comment by tootie | Hacker News Reader

Actually, the SAT (American college entrance exam) penalizes wrong answers more than non-answers. A non-answer gets you no points, but a wrong answer gets points subtracted.

View on HN

Barely. IIRC it's 0 points if blank, -0.25 if wrong, so if you eliminate 1 choice it's worth it to guess. I'd like to see it be -5 points if wrong, since this is more reflective of the real world. When I entered the industry as an electrical engineer this was a difficult transition for me. In school, you're incentivized to guess and BS. But in the real world, the penalty for being wrong is HUGE.

> in the real world, the penalty for being wrong is HUGE

In some situations (committing an integrated circuit design to manufacture probably being one), the cost of being wrong is pretty big.

Other situations where there's a tight feedback loop and you can make/propagate changes quickly (say, most web app software development), it's less so.

True. But generally the cost of guessing and doing something wrong is much higher than saying "I don't know" and asking someone else or Googling the result. School, through homeworks and especially exams, trains us to do our best without outside help. I would argue that this behavior is maladaptive to engineering in the real world.

In the real world, the penalty for being wrong is dependant on the risks involved, and sometimes you can manage the risks.

Guessing is a good skill. Managing risk is a good skill. Learning how to situationally value guessing vs. knowing is a awesome skill.

The SAT is the exception rather than the rule. Most standardized and non-standardized tests reward you for guessing.

The GMAT as well. It's interesting when you work with little kids - you have to encourage them to guess. They're more likely to admit what they don't know.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com