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From: Orchid Win7 v1
Subject: Basic arithmetic
Date: 12 Mar 2013 14:30:30
Message: <513f7446$1@news.povray.org>
OK, so help me out here...

I just took the LPIC-101 exam. For reasons unknown, the test is scored 
from 200 to 800. My score was a piffling 710.

If my arithmetic is right, (710-200)/(800-200) = 510/600 = 85%.

The test consists of 60 questions. 1/60 = 1.666% So that means that I 
must have got between 9 and 10 questions completely wrong. (?)

And to think the guys in the office were taking bets on me getting a 
100% score... Not even close!

(I'd love to know which questions I got wrong...)


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From: clipka
Subject: Re: Basic arithmetic
Date: 12 Mar 2013 14:49:49
Message: <513f78cd$1@news.povray.org>
Am 12.03.2013 19:30, schrieb Orchid Win7 v1:
> OK, so help me out here...
>
> I just took the LPIC-101 exam. For reasons unknown, the test is scored
> from 200 to 800. My score was a piffling 710.
>
> If my arithmetic is right, (710-200)/(800-200) = 510/600 = 85%.
>
> The test consists of 60 questions. 1/60 = 1.666% So that means that I
> must have got between 9 and 10 questions completely wrong. (?)

... or 60 of them slightly wrong. Or a mix of both.


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From: Jim Henderson
Subject: Re: Basic arithmetic
Date: 12 Mar 2013 14:52:09
Message: <513f7959$1@news.povray.org>
On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:30:31 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> OK, so help me out here...
> 
> I just took the LPIC-101 exam. For reasons unknown, the test is scored
> from 200 to 800. My score was a piffling 710.

That's actually a fairly standard scoring range for IT certification 
exams.  I had the formula explained to me once, and it's not as simple as 
it seems (I wish I still had the e-mail that explained it).  The scoring 
methodology also takes into consideration partial credit for multiple-
select multiple choice questions (ie, "pick two of the following five 
items that correctly describe X").

This doesn't have the formula, but it does explain the methodology pretty 
well:

http://certification.acsm.org/faq17-exam-scoring

> If my arithmetic is right, (710-200)/(800-200) = 510/600 = 85%.
> 
> The test consists of 60 questions. 1/60 = 1.666% So that means that I
> must have got between 9 and 10 questions completely wrong. (?)
> 
> And to think the guys in the office were taking bets on me getting a
> 100% score... Not even close!

Questions are sometimes weighted as well, so it's not a straight "x" 
points for "y" questions.  

> (I'd love to know which questions I got wrong...)

You know, of course, that there's no way they'll tell you that.  Bad 
enough that testing centres in the far east are complicit with screen 
scraping the exams and producing "braindumps" that give you the answers - 
and result in "paper certifications".  No test sponsor is going to 
release a list of what you got wrong because that just helps the braindump 
companies (and dealing with them is like playing whack-a-mole already).

Jim


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From: Orchid Win7 v1
Subject: Re: Basic arithmetic
Date: 12 Mar 2013 15:23:06
Message: <513f809a$1@news.povray.org>
>> I just took the LPIC-101 exam. For reasons unknown, the test is scored
>> from 200 to 800. My score was a piffling 710.
>
> That's actually a fairly standard scoring range for IT certification
> exams.  I had the formula explained to me once, and it's not as simple as
> it seems (I wish I still had the e-mail that explained it).  The scoring
> methodology also takes into consideration partial credit for multiple-
> select multiple choice questions (ie, "pick two of the following five
> items that correctly describe X").

Yeah, I'm curious to know what happens for the ones where you have to 
enter text. How do they measure "how close" to being right you are?

>> The test consists of 60 questions. 1/60 = 1.666% So that means that I
>> must have got between 9 and 10 questions completely wrong. (?)
>
> Questions are sometimes weighted as well, so it's not a straight "x"
> points for "y" questions.

The LPI website seems to indicate that /subjects/ are weighted, with 
more important subjects getting more questions. This seems to imply that 
each individual question is worth the same amount.

>> (I'd love to know which questions I got wrong...)
>
> You know, of course, that there's no way they'll tell you that.

Yeah. Heaven forbid that I might actually *learn* from my mistakes...

As an aside, I had to remove my watch before I was allowed to take the 
test. Because, you know, I might have programmed the answers into the 
cogs and gears somehow...


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From: Orchid Win7 v1
Subject: Re: Basic arithmetic
Date: 12 Mar 2013 15:25:42
Message: <513f8136$1@news.povray.org>
>> The test consists of 60 questions. 1/60 = 1.666% So that means that I
>> must have got between 9 and 10 questions completely wrong. (?)
>
> ... or 60 of them slightly wrong. Or a mix of both.

The questions range from laughably easy to painfully obscure. Although I 
have to admit, if you do a Google search for "LPIC example questions", 
most of what comes up is *drastically* harder than the actual exam.

I'm pretty certain I got several questions right. But unfortunately 
there were quite a few questions where I have absolutely no clue what 
the answer might be. (Which distributions use Yum? I've never even heard 
of it!)


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From: Jim Henderson
Subject: Re: Basic arithmetic
Date: 12 Mar 2013 15:54:10
Message: <513f87e2$1@news.povray.org>
On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 19:23:07 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> Yeah, I'm curious to know what happens for the ones where you have to
> enter text. How do they measure "how close" to being right you are?

Well, those tend not to be essay questions, but rather "what command does 
'x'" - and that's fairly straightforward unless you overthink it.  
Typically, an exam like this is looking for the most commonly known way 
to do 'x', not the most obscure way you can think of, or the "well, in 
98% of cases, I can use this, but in that last 2%, it doesn't work".

That's one of the reasons that before I worked in training and exam 
development, I never too certification exams.  I know I tend to overthink 
things. :)

>>> The test consists of 60 questions. 1/60 = 1.666% So that means that I
>>> must have got between 9 and 10 questions completely wrong. (?)
>>
>> Questions are sometimes weighted as well, so it's not a straight "x"
>> points for "y" questions.
> 
> The LPI website seems to indicate that /subjects/ are weighted, with
> more important subjects getting more questions. This seems to imply that
> each individual question is worth the same amount.

Yeah, it's also common to weight by "knowledge area". :)

>>> (I'd love to know which questions I got wrong...)
>>
>> You know, of course, that there's no way they'll tell you that.
> 
> Yeah. Heaven forbid that I might actually *learn* from my mistakes...

That's not the purpose of an exam, though.  An exam's purpose is to 
measure what you know, not to help you assess what you don't know.  
That's what an "assessment" or "technical skills assessment" (or 
"technical knowledge assessment") is for. :)  An exam is a measurement 
tool, nothing more.

> As an aside, I had to remove my watch before I was allowed to take the
> test. Because, you know, I might have programmed the answers into the
> cogs and gears somehow...

Actually, I'm not surprised by that.  Not because they might think you're 
using the exam to answer questions, but rather that you might use it to 
*record* your exam session.  There are *many* ways that people try to 
cheat on exams like this, not the least of which is to try to copy the 
questions and then use that as a study guide.

I had a situation where a candidate was alleged to have taken a USB flash 
drive in to get screengrabs of the exam in question (software like VUE's 
test driver doesn't allow that, but for this particular exam, we weren't 
using that system and the workation wasn't locked down as tightly as a 
result).  The drive was confiscated and examined, and it allegedly had 
screengrabs from not just the exam the candidate was sitting, but other 
exams as well.

These days, you can buy watches/watch bands that have USB storage in 
them, or miniature cameras.  It's easier to require the candidate just 
not take it into the testing room rather than to examine each candidate's 
personal items prior to taking the exam.

Having proctored certification exams and had candidates do things like 
appearing to feign not understanding a testing objective (scenario-based 
exam in that case) in order to try to get me to give him the answer, not 
much surprises me these days when it comes to requirements and 
restrictions.

Jim


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From: Anthony D  Baye
Subject: Re: Basic arithmetic
Date: 12 Mar 2013 18:40:01
Message: <web.513fae7313b10ab3d97ee2b90@news.povray.org>
Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> The test consists of 60 questions. 1/60 = 1.666% So that means that I
> >> must have got between 9 and 10 questions completely wrong. (?)
> >
> > ... or 60 of them slightly wrong. Or a mix of both.
>
> The questions range from laughably easy to painfully obscure. Although I
> have to admit, if you do a Google search for "LPIC example questions",
> most of what comes up is *drastically* harder than the actual exam.
>
> I'm pretty certain I got several questions right. But unfortunately
> there were quite a few questions where I have absolutely no clue what
> the answer might be. (Which distributions use Yum? I've never even heard
> of it!)

yum is the command line package manager used by Fedora and Red Hat.  Debian,
Ubuntu and Mint use apt-get.  I think Gentoo uses something strange, but I'd
have to look it up to be sure.

Regards,
A.D.B.


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From: Jim Henderson
Subject: Re: Basic arithmetic
Date: 12 Mar 2013 19:23:40
Message: <513fb8fc$1@news.povray.org>
On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:38:43 -0400, Anthony D. Baye wrote:

> yum is the command line package manager used by Fedora and Red Hat. 
> Debian,
> Ubuntu and Mint use apt-get.  I think Gentoo uses something strange, but
> I'd have to look it up to be sure.

emerge.

And openSUSE uses apper and/or zypper and/or YaST.

Which can use Yum, raw RPM directories, and a number of other sources.

Jim


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From: Orchid Win7 v1
Subject: Re: Basic arithmetic
Date: 13 Mar 2013 04:58:59
Message: <51403fd3$1@news.povray.org>
>> I'm pretty certain I got several questions right. But unfortunately
>> there were quite a few questions where I have absolutely no clue what
>> the answer might be. (Which distributions use Yum? I've never even heard
>> of it!)
>
> yum is the command line package manager used by Fedora and Red Hat.  Debian,
> Ubuntu and Mint use apt-get.  I think Gentoo uses something strange, but I'd
> have to look it up to be sure.

I've never used Fedora or Red Hat. (No, wait, that's a lie. I have a 
disk somewhere for Red Hat 2.1, circa 1996 or so. I don't think Yum 
existed yet.)

Debian uses .deb packages, which can be installed using dpkg, dselect, 
apt-get or aptitude. The exam requires you to know ALL FOUR. (!) Even 
though in reality you'll only use one of these tools. (Usually aptitude, 
because dselect is utterly incomprehensible!)

Most distros derived from Debian use the same packaging system. Most 
other distros use RPM. But Gentoo uses the Emerge system, because it 
builds absolutely everything from source. It's a great way to expend 
compute cycles and disk space...

I never use RPM itself. I always use Zypper, but that's specific to 
OpenSUSE and isn't on the exam. Whereas Zypper can uninstall a package 
using the "remove" command, the exam requires you to know that this is 
the "-e" switch to RPM. Not u for uninstall or r for remove, but e - for 
no defined reason whatsoever.

But hey, that's Unix all over. Don't expect there to be any reason or 
rhyme to it, just memorise this crap.

PS. It especially amuses me how many commands let you specify the number 
of bytes of operate on with a -c switch. Because, as you know, 1 
character = 1 byte. Oh, wait...


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From: scott
Subject: Re: Basic arithmetic
Date: 13 Mar 2013 06:37:34
Message: <514056ee$1@news.povray.org>
> I just took the LPIC-101 exam. For reasons unknown, the test is scored
> from 200 to 800. My score was a piffling 710.
>
> If my arithmetic is right, (710-200)/(800-200) = 510/600 = 85%.
>
> The test consists of 60 questions. 1/60 = 1.666% So that means that I
> must have got between 9 and 10 questions completely wrong. (?)

Were they all proper questions with only one correct answer, or did it 
include stupid wordy answers that you can only get all the marks if you 
write exactly all the keywords and phrases they have on the answer sheet 
(of course you get no marks for valid answers not on their sheet)?


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