On Tuesday 13 June 2006 22:05, Felipe Salum wrote: > Answering your email in the break of Brazil and Croatia game :) > > On 6/13/06, Dimitrios Bogiatzoules, Product Developer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I've heard that before. Why is hands on giving more credibility > > in your opinion? > > In hands on if you dont know how to do a task you can't close your > eyes and choose one option to mark, many times you'll see things > that only who is in linux administration all time knows how to > finish it. You are confusing observed facts with your assessment of those facts :-) First thing: Many people believe that choosing answers at random on multiple choice gives you a 22% head start, as most questions have 4 options, a few have 5 or more. This is simply not true as elementary statistics tell you the baseline now becomes 22%. Measure your actual score as what you get in excess of 22% and you get the truth. As I said in the earlier mail, completing the question on hands-on only shows that the candidate can perform THAT action. You can't extrapolate it to mean anything more than that. On a subject I don't know well I always perform much better on hands-on tests, mainly because I can read man pages much faster than I recall dimly remembered facts. > > > 2. We all know about braindumps, testkings, boson, etc, where > > > some people just memorize the answers. > > > > Don't forget that hands on exams handle with a very limited > > number of different. If you know that you will be asked to > > complete one of, lets say, 10 scenarios on a running machine then > > it becomes rather easier... > > Yes, I know. In hands on exams you have limited time too, so who > just knows what will be asked and tested at home, if anything is > different in the exam will fail, different from the experts one. Mark Miller raises an interesting point in this regard a year ago, I wish I still had the mail to cite the source. The gist of it is that there is a statistical trend with hands-on where the results are affected by the candidates mood (nervous, freak out in exams) whereas it is largely absent with multiple choice. So mood is an artificial wild variable thrown into the exam affecting results where it doesn't belong. (That means that the candidate is not normally nervous and on edge when doing his daily job) A major disadvantage of hands-on is that questions usually follow on from each other - you can only add new users if you perform the install right. making a mistake in the first step affects the rest of the scores, which it shouldn't as failing one step should affect only the score for THAT step -- If only me, you and dead people understand hex, how many people understand hex? Alan McKinnon alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za +27 82, double three seven, one nine three five _______________________________________________ lpi-examdev mailing list [email protected] http://list.lpi.org/mailman/listinfo/lpi-examdev
