Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment AMC8 variablilty?

I am looking for others' thoughts and experiences regarding the variability on the AMC8 tests. AMC8 testing is coming up next week. Since DS/DD do not belong to any type of math club and I wanted their exposure to tricky math problems as well as have some preparation for the test, they have taken a half dozen of the past AMC8 tests over the last month and a half. Interestingly, the past stats (average, top 5%, top 1%, etc) on the AMC8 are very consistent from year to year. However, my children's scores are not. For example, on a good day, DS may make the top 1% of all scorers, but on a bad day, he may barely make the category for high scoring 6th (and below) graders. It is clear that some of it has to do with relative carelessness (based on redo of incorrect problems) and some of it has to do with the particular distribution of types of problems (DS has more trouble with geometry), but there appears to be some variability beyond that.

Has anyone else observe that type of variability - a difference of 6 problems (out of 25)?

Some variability could just be due to chance. For example if someone definitely knows 15 of the questions, and has to guess the other 10 with a 50% chance of being correct for each, then they have at least a 5% chance of getting 2 of those 10 (hence 17/25) or worse, and they have at least a 5% chance of getting 8 of those 10 (hence 23/25) or better.

It's partly maturity, maybe? I've seen DS start to be able to pull "absence of careless mistakes" out of the bag when it matters recently, something he couldn't do a year or two ago.

This contest is a mixed bag. Fun Stuff. My DS in 5th grade is taking it next week. I have been giving him single questions taped to his school notebook for a few years. He Loves this test, along with a bunch of others.

He also took the ASMA and the NOETIC this week and MOEMS last week. The hard part for him is not getting too upset with the problems that give you a problem. Keep practicing.

Actually, there is a 20% chance (five answer choices) of randomely choosing the correct answer, but I see your point. Chance can definitely have an impact.

The timing is definitely a big factor since you have to see the answer in about a minute and a half. There were times when he took a lot longer to answer one question and then had to rush through the last few questions.

I am still looking forward to that "absence of careless mistake" stage although DS is generally not too bad when the results are important.

Wow - your DS must love math! The lunch box is a great idea if I can ever get discipline enough to do something like that consistently. Good luck to your DS next week.

It could be 50%, for example if someone eliminates 3 options, but is equally uncertain about the other 2.

He does love math. He goes to school early 2 or 3 times a week to work on problem solving test like mentioned above. He cannot participate in math counts competition since he is in 5th grade but hangs out with the other kids who do.

The National Math Counts Champion in 2012 went to his school.

We did a competition in spring and fall of this year and he loves it.

I just have to keep an eye out for signs of burn out. Nothing so far.