Are Similar Answers a Clue ?

ricktea

I've taken a lot of practice exams for my Core Exam A+. I notice
that on many of the possible answers of a typical Question, often
two Answers stand out that are very similar of the possible 4 answers.
It is usually a ploy or trick to draw you away from the correct answer.
Does anyone know what I mean, and is this worth noting on the Exam?
If this is true, that often your choices can be narrowed down to 2 quickly,
giving you a 50% chance.
Thanks, rick

i.e. 10Base2 *
10BaseT *
Cat 5
100BaseT

supertechCETma

Sorry Rick,

While there are certain tricks an experienced test taker can look for in a poorly written exam, I'm afraid you won't find a lot of them in the modern CompTIA exam. The folks at CompTIA have pulled all exam development in-house now and they have gathered a team that works pretty diligently to produce psychometrically sound exams. There are no trick questions. Wrong answers (known as distracters) are meant to be plausible to the candidate with a limited knowledge of the material.

Your best bet is to approach the exam with a firm grasp of the objectives and not try to second guess the exam.

Plantwiz

Rick,

I cannot stress enough that with real experience/lab experience you will not have any trouble with 'tricks'. The exams are straight forward.

If you don't have much experience then set up a lab and work through various scenerios and the objectives until it all makes sense. The exams are not very difficult, but they candidate is expected to have approximately 500 hours of experience prior to the exam...or at least that level of understanding of the material being tested.

But no, there are no 'tricks'.

Slowhand

I don't know about answers trying to lure you away, but I do know that almost all certification exams have a "style" of putting answers together that can seem similar if you don't read the question closely enough or if you don't know the material backwards and forwards. An example of something you'll see on a test is:

What is the standard type of network cable used today in most ethernet networks?

A. 10BaseT
B. 100BaseTX
C. 1000BaseT
D. 100BaseFX


Or you'll see things that are so similar, it hurts:

What is the IEEE Standards format for a parallel port?

A. IEEE1394
B. IEEE1284
C. IEEE1294
D. IEEE896

If you haven't been working in the field, and you haven't really, really been hitting those books, similar questions like this are the ones that throw you for a loop. Other times, you have to read the question thouroughly. For example, if I change the first question to:

What ethernet cable standard would be used in an environment such as an old brick building with faulty wiring and fluorescent bulbs for lighting?

The answer would be different. Hint: it's not always the best choice, it's the best choice possible. You may pick something you know would work, and wouldn't cost as much, in the real world. If that isn't one of the four options. you have to go with what they give you.

Webmaster

I agree with the previous posters, but to answer your question, whether two similar answers indicate that one of those answers is the correct one and the other a derivative of the correct answer: no. Good practice question writers know this too, and will deliberately sometimes, to throw you off, create two similar answers that are both wrong, but one is a derivative of the other. Kinda like reversed psychology for those who try to see through the author's question. A similar popular factor in guessing answers is the lenght of the questions. In bad practice questions you could for example, see 4 answers, of which one is a grammatically correct sentence, and the other 3 are one or two words. Bad writers take enough time to a formulate a correct answer, but just aren't good in making up incorrect answers. Which isn't easy, especially when the answer become longer, because the incorrect answer should make at least some sense. Ie. if you are asking about fruits, listing 'a pig' is just too easy. So that's why one or more correct answers are often (and sometimes too obvious) derivatives of the correct answer. Especially for certification and other professional exams you simply need to know your stuff, for a TV quiz you would definitely have an advantage if you can see through the structure of the question.

ricktea

Thankyou members for explaining that, would it be true
then to say that many of the questions on the hardware or Os
exam have answers that are all correct ? And that it is
my job to pick out the best answer ? If that is true, that is
making life more difficult. By the way, can you please
tell me what the two correct answers are in your example
about Networks. Thankyou, Rick