Hi, I just read the exam joining instructions and it dosent mention "multiple choice questions" like in the last session. All it says is: 1. Candidates MUST include typed workings, in addition to their typed answers, in the Word document for all numerical questions. Candidates using another software package to aid with calculations MUST ensure that all calculations appear in full in the Word document to ensure that they receive full marks. If full workings are not displayed then examiners will not be able to assess how the answer was determined, and full marks may not be awarded. Should i still assume that if there is a numerical multiple choice question, I should just write one letter to receive the marks?
End up there's no MCQ question at all, is everyone expecting that? I bought the mock exam and they do have MCQ for those notational heavy questions but we ended up still have to type it in full...
I wasnt expecting the lack of Multi choice questions. Was quite surprised. Any ideas of how Q8 machine learning is done?
No, and I don't know how the institute would have expected anyone to know either. I don't know how they expected anyone could have typed out the whole exam in 3 hours and 15 minutes either. The last exam had a 35% pass rate which was the lowest pass rate of all the IFOA exams I think. That exam was far easier than this one with multiple choice questions. I would be interested to read the opinions of any ActEd tutors.
If you would like to see "potential answers" for the papers you can find them on youtube if you type something like "CS2 paper a 2021 April". A different company called Finatics provides them however, they could potentially be slightly wrong (IFOA will obviously have the final say). I posted this reply to you earlier with the link but acted i think deleted it, not entirely sure why (hence i am not posting the link incase it falls foul of the rules for some reason...). Not entriely sure why as the exam session has finished.
I was also expecting some MCQ questions. Did any of you receive any updates/info from IFoA stating there wouldn't be any? Just wondering whether I missed out any update. If not, really wish they would be consistent with the exam format, as it is already tough enough without having to type all our solutions. Agreed that this year's paper is more difficult than last years', especially the constraint on time to type out all solutions.
I also was completely thrown off by the lack of mcqs and different style/ format of the exam (ie open book and typing all answers in word). I feel this exam was very difficult to prepare for given the current study material available. The mock exams especially were incredibly misleading. I know they are for September, but does anyone know if the exams are likely to stay online/ be in the open book format after the next sitting? If so is there likely to be new material issued which more accurately reflects the style/ format of the online exam? If they now go back to mcqs questions for the next sitting it could be hours and hours of preparation wasted for students that assume the full exam will have to be typed in word.
Yes, unfortunately this seems to be another example of poor communication by the IFoA (to the extent that if done by a member in their professional work it could easily be argued to be a breach of Principle 6 Communications of the Actuaries' Code, for failure to communicate clearly) . This is also being discussed at https://www.reddit.com/r/ActuaryUK/comments/n14d3w/april_2021_exam_experience_survey_cs2/.
I could not finish all the questions as a lot of typings were required (almost same amount as in a writing exam, and I was suffering from the amount of brackets sometimes, I was also expecting MCQs). I skipped the machine learning question and went back to it in the last few minutes I was left with (so not sure if I was right or if I am saying something stupid here). I found the question difficult as it was time consuming, what was required was to classify the observations based on the decision tree given. This probably would have been a way easier task with a paper based exam, but with the online sitting, I found it hard to scroll up and down to compare values (and not being able to mark things up very easily in PDF compared to using a pen also made the process more time consuming). I was not able to finish it in the end although I had an idea how it might have worked......
