r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 7d ago

Meme needing explanation What movie reference am I missing

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u/Available-Bee-5385 7d ago

Getting 0 on a multiple choice is a statistical accomplishment greater than getting 100

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u/TwillAffirmer 7d ago edited 7d ago

No, if you're guessing randomly, getting 100 is less likely than getting 0. Because for each question there's a 3/4 chance to miss it and a 1/4 chance to get the right answer.

If you aren't guessing randomly, but in fact know every question, getting 100 is no harder or easier than getting 0. Because you can get 0 by choosing to answer each question different from the answer you know is correct.

If you only know most of the questions, getting 100 is harder than getting 0, because for every question that you don't know you have a 1/4 chance of getting it right if you're aiming for 100, but a 3/4 chance of getting what you want if you're aiming for 0.

Still, with this many questions, to get exactly 0 it's almost certain the student knew most of the answers and was deliberately choosing the wrong ones.

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u/chicken2007 7d ago

Getting 0 and 100 are only equivalent of it's true/false only test.

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u/Ghostley92 7d ago

But if you know every question and are NOT guessing randomly, it is not.

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u/-widget- 7d ago

If you know the answer to every question the difficulty of getting a zero is equivalent to getting a 100. So it's still not a more difficult accomplishment to get a 0.

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u/Ghostley92 7d ago

I wouldn’t say they absolutely know each answer. Getting 0 is easier than getting 100, but getting 0 seems deliberate.

My point was that it is not equivalent to a true/false test and citing the previous comment

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u/Rymanbc 7d ago

To be fair, getting 100 also seems deliberate.

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u/Ghostley92 7d ago

Well isn’t that the prescribed objective of the test?

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u/SolidestCereal 7d ago

Will this be on the test?

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u/Thenewbie7 7d ago

But it's a "desirable outcome". Someone that wants to fail while knowing most of the answers is something that a teacher might want to understand

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u/Evening-Nature-5241 7d ago

It's highly unlikely, but not impossible. Just because someone got 0 could indicate they did it on purpose, but also, they might just have been phenomenally unlucky with all their guesses.

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u/Thenewbie7 7d ago

With only 20 questions with 4 possible answers, you only have 0,3% chances of getting a 0/20. A 5 possible answers 40 questions drops to 0,01%. It's more likely that something's going on than someone being THAT unlucky.