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pjeby comments on Shut Up And Guess - Less Wrong
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They were in SAT prep books 25-27 years ago. (I took the SAT's while I was still 15.) The explanation given was something along the lines of, "Most people say that the SAT penalizes you for guessing, but this is wrong. Rather, it simply makes sure that, on average, guessing won't get you any extra points if you don't know anything about the question. If you can eliminate even one wrong answer out of five, you will always come out ahead by guessing. If you can't, then you still won't lose anything by guessing." They then showed math and examples to back it up.
It was actually in a very early part of the book I read, because they wanted you to understand how important it was to be able to identify even one wrong answer, and thus why the methods you were going to learn for doing that were important.
I also remember reading and using this information when taking the SAT, so it surprises me that Yvain's classmates wouldn't take the free points. My best guess, unfounded except for intuition, is that the something-for-nothing aspect triggered a "this can't be!" feeling. Or something. Yeah I dunno, as far as I remember everyone I talked to about this in high school was fine with guessing after eliminating a choice.
A third data point in agreement: in my HS it was repeatedly drilled into us (by the official prep materials, by teachers, by everyone) that you should always guess.
Although otiose to adduce further examples, I will still mention that ~5 years ago, my SAT prep book made it very clear that you could always eliminate some of the choices and thus that you always wanted to guess.
Well, the book I read also emphasized that even if you had no clue, you still couldn't lose anything by guessing; on average it would just come out the same as if you left it blank, so you might as well give it a try.
But I can certainly understand why this is easier to get in the context of a 4- or 5-answer question than 2. To understand the true/false case, you need to understand at least a little about calibrated probabilities.
This matches my experience as well. They did explain the math, but they didn't dwell on it. Mostly, they just drilled it into the heads of the students that you MUST guess or horrible things will happen.
I left the course at that point because it seemed to me like cheating.
This exactly matches my experience with test prep books from a decade later.
Honestly, it's the first and foundational principle of learning to take multiple-choice tests--figure out what the guessing penalty is. And, in my experience, few such tests are calibrated to make guessing net negative.
Quick pruning of the set of possible answers and guessing if you can't decide on the rest is just what you do.
I remember seeing advice regarding the SAT and AP exams that recommended guessing when eliminating either one or two responses. Almost nobody seemed to know the theory behind it, which I guess is why both options sounded perfectly plausible. I was horrified when my AP Lit teacher recommended to the class guessing only if 2 or more responses could be eliminated, and couldn't understand the math I did to show otherwise and wondered how such a thing was possible then there was a "penalty" for guessing (yes, she actually based her understanding of the situation on the name given rather than on doing any logical analysis; Orwell was surely rolling in his grave). Thankfully, she decided to trust me anyways.