It’s a tip I hear often and I don’t quite understand.
If the time is nearly up and you have to fill in answers for multiple choice, A,B,C,D for example. Why would you only go with ‘A’?
You should get around 25% of the answers correct but no proper test is ever going to have ‘A’ as correct answer many times in a row.
Would it not be marginally better to just pick at random?
Why not?
Edit: I understand real world is rarely truly random, but is my thinking here correct given answers are randomly distributed?
In: 0
On every particular question, if you’re guessing, you have no reason to prefer any letter over any other. So there is no question where you can expect to do better by guessing B than A. So you gain no benefit, on average, by trying to vary your guesses. Just because you’re trying to imitate something unpredictable doesn’t mean you should act unpredictably. If you’re interested, here’s [an extended essay on the subject](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/msJA6B9ZjiiZxT6EZ/lawful-uncertainty) that I particularly like.
On the other hand, trying to guess randomly isn’t free. It takes attention, effort, and time. If you pick the letter you’re going to use as a guess in advance, you can guess it without taking time to think about which letter you feel like guessing in order to be the most random today. That could save you a critical few seconds that allow you to answer one more question based on the actual wording of the question instead of a guess.
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