This is not the exam we took in March.

[dliving]

Night and day. It is so much harder I was laughing at the end. Dr. O said this might happen. It did. I'm not being a sore loser nor trying to discourage anyone, but I scored a 5 in March. Being much better prepared this time, it was not even close. I just want people to know that haven't taken it yet to push yourselves. Too late to try and learn new stuff, and you don't need it anyway. Make what you are learning now more difficult. Forwards and backwards. Backwords mostly. :goofy:

[wrigleyville3421]

I heard the exact opposite, so it is just about who you talk to. We have a great program that has a class for credit for exam P, and I heard it was so much easier. Don't go on these discussion boards and take everyone of them so seriously. They are just to see how other people have done, not about you!! It is about how you prepared and where you came from!

[JoJo2105]

I took it last July. I decided to go for it again. This test was completely different. Last year, it was full of hard stuff. I studied all of that stuff this year to prepare. None of it was on there. It was all word problems that were weirdly worded to try and confuse you. I did not pass, and I knew I was not going to from the 5th question. I need to go back and just focus on tricky word problems.

Does anyone know how to get the s.d. from just the E(X^2) and the P(X>0) ??

[dliving]

They are just to see how other people have done, not about you!! It is about how you prepared and where you came from!

I am to say what I wish someone would have told me when I was under the mistaken impression that this exam would remotely resemble the difficulty of March. I would offer your friends in class 2 to 1 odds that the passing rate is lower. I am here to help you make money too!

[dliving]

Does anyone know how to get the s.d. from just the E(X^2) and the P(X>0) ??

If they do, they need to get a life. Just kidding, I can't do it and I gave up having a life. You're straight on on those tricky word problems. I studied a lot of hard stuff too. I guess I missed a good opportunity in March. My first time may not have been a good representation of p. It took me about ten questions before I figured it out. Just kept waiting for it to slack off. It did on #30 on mine. Just a little too late.

[winvicta]

Does anyone know how to get the s.d. from just the E(X^2) and the P(X>0) ??

What is the range of the random variable X? Are the values of X anti-symmetrically distributed with respect to x=0? If so, and if P(X) is symmetrically distributed with respect to x=0, i.e. if P(X=-x) = P(X=x), then the std is just the square root of E(X^2), since E(X) would be zero. If not, then I don't know (or more info is needed). In all cases, a check to see how Sum(P(X))=1 is worth the trouble.

Cheers.

[krzysio]

Does anyone know how to get the s.d. from just the E(X^2) and the P(X>0) ??

Get you give more information? If you have a way of getting the mean, you are done. What exactly are you given?
Yours,
Krzys'

[jimbeauxk]

The exam questions are random. I felt March's exam was overly difficult versus what I prepared from and what other posters had experienced. I don't believe they make one round of exams any more difficult than the last, it's luck of the draw.

[mandersonjr]

Why do they change the exams so much, material wise?

[dliving]

The variable is normal, I really wanted that mean.

I wondered about that Jim, but I trusted that they really tried to keep the difficulty levels within the sitting the same. I now believe I just got lucky last time. I know its relative- that I have strengths and weakness different from others. All I know is my exam in March was much easier to me. My biology teacher once told us in regards to makeup exams that you can't make two exams on the same material that are the exact same difficulty. He intentionally made makeups harder to not punish those that showed up on time.

I choked under the pressure. Just like in march I wrote questions down the next day at 4:00 AM when I can't go back to sleep. Solved them quickly. It is much different for me with no pressure. That and I am ADD and my brain doesnt work on anything for 3 hours straight. I ace all my math classes, but we all know that means nothing with this stuff.

[stormhold]

Night and day. It is so much harder I was laughing at the end. Dr. O said this might happen. It did. I'm not being a sore loser nor trying to discourage anyone, but I scored a 5 in March. Being much better prepared this time, it was not even close. I just want people to know that haven't taken it yet to push yourselves. Too late to try and learn new stuff, and you don't need it anyway. Make what you are learning now more difficult. Forwards and backwards. Backwords mostly. :goofy:

what's the point? which exam are you referring to?

[JoJo2105]

Get you give more information? If you have a way of getting the mean, you are done. What exactly are you given?
Yours,
Krzys'

You are given that the probability X>0 is 90% and the E of X squared. That 's it.

[jagojazz]

yeah, my 2nd time taking it, was way more prepared than last time, and didnt pass, it felt way harder.. alot of strange questions that im not sure how you'd even prepare for if you hadn't seen that EXACT situation before

[natstrat79]

First post, and I just got out of testing center with letter in my hand that said, "Congratulations".

While I didn't take the March exam I didn't think that the exam that I received was overly difficult. It did have a lot of word problems but if you really thought about what they were asking most of them turned out to be pretty straight forward. I thought the exam was somewhat in-between the SOA 140 problems and the later exams of the ASM manual.

Here's what I thought it all boiled down to. If you just knew how to walk through the motions of the SOA 140 problems then you probably would have had a hard time. If you truly understood the"why" behind everything you did to solve each problem on the SOA 140, then the exam was more a matter of thinking through how to apply those concepts to similar problems with a slight twist. Like maybe a problem was a basic Baye's problem but based on the wording of the problem and what they gave you, you had to realize there were a few extra steps involved to get the right pieces before you could "crank" it out.

[tyhawk10]

First, also took P in March and scored a 4.

Second, I studied my butt off for the next two months and passed yesterday.

Now, as for the original post, the exam content in May was VERY VERY different from the March exam. But, isn't that known going into the exam? The computerized exams have a pool of questions they pick from to generate your specific exam, hence its always going to be somewhat different. Gotta know ALL the material.

Remember, 'difficulty' is relative; all depending on what and how much you study.