Sorry I’m not sorry.
On a test like the CFA exam, I was never close enough to another person that copying from their exam was even imaginable. I can’t understand why one would even try to cheat this way. To peer over and figure out what tiny oval they had filled in on a sheet filled with tiny ovals? And then to assume that this person was any more likely to have the right answer than me. And to say that the likely gain from doing this versus the risk of getting caught is worth it, particularly when there is no penalty for simply guessing.
As much as I loathe cheating, we need people like this in markets. How else can we make money off of the momentum factor??
Perhaps when i took my exams i didn’t think i had much of accomplishments, and honestly, if i get banned from CFA, big deal, i won’t go to jail for it, i just have to change career, it’s not like this is the only career option i have.
Well i wouldn’t copy someone else’s answer simply because statistically speaking, the candidate is more likely to be wrong than correct.
I’d rather randomly guess then cheat.
I assume that you mean that you’d rather randomly guess _ than _ cheat. To randomly guess, _ then _ cheat is very, very different.
Yes, THAN - typo 
It’s an interesing question. Statistically speaking, you are more likely to get the right answer by copying the candidate than by guessing, assuming that the average candidate has put in some useful study time. That doesn’t mean that the candidate is more likely to be right than wrong: it just means that the candidate’s chance of getting something right is most likely higher than pure guessing.
It gets trickier if you have to make the statement of: what is the chance of the other candidate getting the right answer, given the fact that you are choosing not to solve the problem, but to guess vs. copy. I’m not sure how one would do that calculation without more info on the guy next to you and whether you feel you studied adequately for that section or not.
But given that guessing has essentially no risk of being cited for cheating, and that copying the candidate does (and even more so if you have to peer over and figure out which answer to copy), the risk/return ratio for copying is SO bad that it’s hard to figure out if there are ANY conditions where it makes sense to copy.
Perhaps CFAI is right to ban such people forever. Given that there is virtually no benefit in copying under these circumstances, people who actually do copy probably do it simply out of habit, and are therefore unlikely to stop simply because they were caught once.
This assumes no costs to cheating:
From a utility perspective, you would generally want to copy someone else’s answer whenever you feel that the probability of you getting the right answer is lower than the % of candidates who will answer that question correctly.
Guessing yields a 33% chance. I would wager that there are no questions where less than 33% of candidates get the right answer, so it is always better to copy than guess.
I didn’t think about it that way, but you are right, randomly guess is roughly 33% and pass score has been around 38-50% depending on the level…
How many answers do you have to copy before you get caught by “similarity analysis”? I mean… if you copy like 5 answers, that doesn’t seem like it would provide any meaningful information. Seems like you would need to copy a whole lot of answers.
Agreed. I have no idea how much time the person next to me spent on the exam. I have no idea what they know and what they don’t know. I like using my brain rather than somebody else’s.
But then again, if you have absolutely no idea what the question is asking, I suppose copying your neighbor’s answer is probably still better than a random guess. (Assuming you don’t get caught, that is…)
Thats right. I’d forgotten that there are only three options on the exam now. I was still imagining a 25% chance of being right by guessing. So it’s even less sensible to cheat now.
As far as “similarity analysis” is concerned,i think CFA institiute does focus on answersheets which have got same wrong answers(ie there is only one correct answer so it is understandable that you ticked same options as your neighbour candidate but ticking the same wrong options as your neighbour will raise eyebrows.)
For morning section in L3 i would say you may benefit from cheating because you can see someone else’s answer and determine if it “makes sense”.
As for MC, it’s not so intuitive.
If you took a long enough look to evaluate someone’s answer in L3 morning, you’re going to be busted for sure.
Mmm, how did she know the person she’s copying from is writing the same version of the exam?
LOL.
I feel like she wrote L1, as she refers to it as “the CFA exam”. I don’t feel bad for not feeling bad for her.
I’m guessing the cheater socialized with the person before the exam started. Maybe the person sounded smart and he/she decided to put all eggs in the same basket.
That’s the passing rate, which has nothing to do with the % the average person is getting right, nor with - the more salient issue for this topic - how many people correctly answer the question at hand.
You will ALWAYS have a better chance of getting it right by copying the person next to you than by randomly guessing.
Sajnos…this is a problem for elementary kids.
This cannot possibly be true.
If you’re copying from someone who is so bad that their reasoned answers will be correct less than 1/3 of the time, you’d do better to guess randomly.
Ughh…seriously, think for a second!
The % the person sitting next to you gets doesn’t matter. Besides, do you really think that anyone who passes level 2 will get less than 33% on level 3, or same with levels 1 and 2? Doesn’t matter, this isn’t the relevant statistic.
What matters is the % of people who get the question you’re stumped on correct.
It is true if you believe that there is no question where > 2/3 people get the wrong answer. Even if only 5% of people know how to solve it and the rest randomly guess, the law of large numbers ensures that (with very high probability) with 10,000+ takers, more than 33% will get every question right.