I see from the Student Consultative Forum the comments on the April exam about errors, the size of the dataset and the lack of advice on technical elements so I see I wasn't on my own. Hopefully this cohort of students aren't penalised for the errors on the side of the exam setting process! Their response is encouraging anyway "the examiners will take that into consideration when determining the overall pass mark for the exam." Let's hope so when we see the pass rate on Thursday
"I was disappointed at what were, in my opinion, some sloppy elements to the CP2 examination questions.
1) In paper 1 the number of vines for the 2nd ("smaller") vineyard was not specified, although this was a material assumption in building the model. A strange "data error" if this was deliberate.
2) In paper 1 (2 iii a and 2 vii) we are asked to compare findings with "the theoretical average" (indicating the "mean" to the majority of readers) of a quantity defined as an exponential function of a uniform random variable. This involves an integration I would imagine is outside the scope of the syllabus, and a fairly heavy calculation for the marks allocated. Asking for the "median" instead would have helped for the first vineyard. For the 2nd vineyard this calculation was even more complex, and also involved the mean number of "core" and "overtime" hours worked which involves calculation of the mean of a truncated uniform random variable.
3) Despite the assurances in the question paper, there was a mistake in the model provided (see e.g. cell D8 of "Most Deliveries" tab which has a non-zero allocation lower than the minimum). Using different information sources (audit trail, question paper, model) which contradicted one another caused a lot of confusion and wasted time when trying to understand the model.
CP2 Paper 1 – the question style was very different to recent years past papers and no methodology/formulae given for the uniform distribution which meant students either had to know the detail or remember the specific subject it could be found in to look up, wasting valuable time in the exam. In previous papers the methodology or generic formula was provided."
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