Since I haven't seen any posts on this... I thought I can ask the question... How difficult did you guys find this exam? I thought this was the most difficult paper in recent times (even after accounting for exam bias)...
I am of the same view as you..I found the paper really hard..a few questions were ok..but the majority were hard..was really down after working so hard and not doing well
I thought parts of it were tricky, nearly every part had some twist, like that question where the distribution of N was a geometric distribution but if you hadn't have seen that then you wouldn't have gotten far. But many of the questions like the last two were mostly fine, the question on time series not too bad...and the GLM question was a repeat from a previous year. I messed up on the EBCT but oh well!
Messed up EBCT and Bayesian Stats. So many marks lost there..and EBCT is that chapter you expect to Kill
I felt the same way. Was highly disappointed with my attempt. Went through the Question paper on the website and realised I hadnt attempted close to 20-30 marks
If you're interested I've created a YouTube video on this paper. It can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRL-dZSD-TI
It felt harder. There were more than the usual number of questions with a little twist and a couple didn't allow you to progress if you didn't get the first part. So I expect the pass rate to be a bit lower.
Hi John, Would the pass mark be significantly lower due to the difficulty of the paper? I do understand that they don't give out the pass mark.. but given that the paper was significantly more difficult, would it be significantly lower (say by 10 marks or more)? So if the pass mark on average over the last 5 years was 65, would it become 55 for this diet?
Why does the level of difficulty of the paper vary so much over years? Its seems a bit unfair when the paper is more difficult only on your exam turn
My understanding (but it may be wrong) is that the pass mark does fluctuate if it's felt that a particular paper is harder than others. Papers always try to test the higher order application of skills rather than regurgitation and as such they need to include unusual questions - and it's tricky to get the balance right on these.
