Multiple choice test

It’s been forever since I last took a multiple choice test. My recent experiences were all just survey questions. But man, to construct a decent survey seems to be an art in itself, because half of the time they leave me scratching my head bout how badly the available choices represent reality.

So I signed up with a new bank recently. They gave me a debit card with which I pay my business expenses, 85% of which are payments for postal charges of my local mail carrier. All was well for the first few months. Then, suddenly, they wanted me to verify my payments through an app on my phone. They don’t seem to have some intelligent pattern recognition in place, so now, even though I pay similar amounts to the same company all the time, they ask me every single time to login to my account on my phone and verify. Annoying. But what was even more annoying was that the verification didn’t even work! After a few failed attempts and workarounds, I finally had enough and contacted customer support, who told me I had to de-install and re-install the app. When I did that, my phone told me I didn’t have enough space to install the app. Anyway, long story short, I am now able to do what I was able to do before, albeit more slowly in a more complicated manner, and it only cost me about 2 hours of my life. Great service!

What does all that have to do with multiple choice questions? Well, a few days later, they sent me an invitation for a customer feedback form and boy, did I want to give them some feedback! But the survey was constructed in such a closed way that I couldn’t even express what happened to me. And they also did not have any way to enter any additional description. So I just gave up and didn’t submit it, because I’ve got more pressing things to do.

It’s a dilemma though. By not telling them how much they suck, they think that there are no problems and don’t improve their service. On the other hand, if I take 15 min of my precious time to tell them all my grievances, the message will most likely disappear in a company memory hole anyway.

Ah, the joys of dealing with faceless companies.

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6 comments on “Multiple choice test
  1. CRJHotDog says:

    Ah, the multiple choice test…
    When I did my ATP the “rule of thumb” was
    a) either answer “C” or
    b) the longest answer displayed

    Worked well…most of the time ๐Ÿ™‚

  2. Dawnchaser says:

    I sat the JAA ATPL Flight Planning(?) exam in which the “randomise answer button” hadn’t been pressed.
    All answers were ‘A’ ๐Ÿ˜
    …and the exam stood.

  3. Bruce Bergman says:

    Usually the “Process of Elimination” works best – When you do the initial read-through and cross out all the obviously Very Wrong answers on each multiple choice you’re down to either one or two possibly correct answers, and you can work those for actual solution-content.

    And if it comes up that neither of those is right, maybe you were a little too quick eliminating the Red Herring answers, go through them again. Some prankster instructors try to disguise the right answer in the wrong answer verbiage.

  4. Merijnathome says:

    My cousin once had a girlfriend called Amiranda.
    I said who calls his daughter Amiranda.
    My cousin said: โ€œI think her Catherine was drunk of joy when he reported her for her birth certificate because her mother gave him 3 choices:
    Amiranda
    Belinda
    Cecillia

    Merijn at home

  5. Johsua says:

    In SAT or similar, complete as much as you can without guessing. Look for the most common answer. Go back and then use elimination as possible on the remaining. Try to narrow to as few answers as possible. Guess your common letter or, if that is not available, at random. Most tests are biased toward one letter or another.

    In practice for FAA tests you should always be able to get it to two answers with one fitting best. Just do not not read the question not carelessly because they are not worded simply.

  6. reynard61 says:

    “Itโ€™s a dilemma though. By not telling them how much they suck, they think that there are no problems and donโ€™t improve their service.”

    I’m pretty sure that that’s the whole point. If they can word the “survey” so that is skews in *their* favor no matter what, they can pat themselves on the back for having “flawless” service — even if it’s the absolute worst in the World. (See George Orwell’s “THE PRINCIPLES OF NEWSPEAK”. http://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/en_app )

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