CISSP CAT Myths

Each candidate taking the CISSP CAT exam will start with an item that is well below the passing standard.After each item is answered, the item selection algorithm determines the next item to present to the candidate with the expectation that a candidate should have approximately a 50% chance of answering that item correctly (ISC2) Published

Its my Understanding

My Understanding = You must be very confident in first 20 Questions and make sure you must be correct. Best way to pass new format is more time intially spend on initial questions because that will set your base for upcoming questions 

One of the common goals in using a CAT algorithm is to reduce the number of questions a student needs to answer in order to establish, to a specified level of reliability, an estimate of the student’s ability.

Super-brilliant people sometimes get an easy question wrong, and folks who are minimally prepared can still guess correctly on one of the toughest questions. With statistics, the computer can absorb such aberrations. What the computer is doing throughout your test is averaging over the difficulty ratings of all the previous questions, using the data about which you got right and which you got wrong to create a complex average that is the best estimate of your ability, and each new question it feeds you is the computer’s attempt to refine that best estimate. This process mostly involves questions around your level, but in its sweeps, the algorithm sometimes will give you a really hard or really easy question as a check.

Your score is a composite result that takes into account the difficulty of each question you got right and the difficulty of each question you got wrong.

Facts vs. Myths about Computer Adaptive Testing 

Fact: If you get medium questions mostly right, the computer will start to feed you harder questions; if you get medium questions mostly wrong, the computer will start to feed you easier questions.

In general, this is true: this is the overall general pattern. The computer adaptive testing adjusts to your level throughout—much like the E/W and N/S question in the geography game above, it is constantly refining its picture of your ability, question by question.

Myth: If I suddenly get a ridiculously easy question, that means I got the last question wrong.

First of all, a question that seems easy to you may or may not actually be a truly “easy” question, that is, one that most people get right; it may just be that you saw a shortcut that most people don’t see.

Even if the question is, by objective standards, an easy question, no conclusion can be drawn about the previous question. The computer adaptive testing is running a complex algorithm, which sometimes involves giving you a very easy or a very hard question. Don’t take it personally: the adaptive testing is just running its algorithm.

Fact: Not finishing all the questions in a section hurts your score.

That is quite true. It’s exceedingly important not only to learn content and strategy, but also to practice working efficiently so that you don’t run out of time. Ideally, you want to hone your time management skills so that you have abundant time on even the last questions on a section.