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Record W1925252485 · doi:10.1080/0020739x.2015.1091515

Benford's law and distractors in multiple choice exams

2015· preprint· en· W1925252485 on OpenAlexaff
Fred M. Hoppe

Bibliographic record

VenueInternational Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology · 2015
Typepreprint
Languageen
FieldMathematics
TopicBenford’s Law and Fraud Detection
Canadian institutionsMcMaster University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsBenford's lawNumerical digitExpression (computer science)PsychologyLawComputer scienceArithmeticMathematicsStatisticsPolitical science

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Suppose that in a multiple choice examination the leading significant digit of the correct options follows Benford's Law, while the leading digit of the distractors is uniform. Consider a strategy for guessing at answers that selects the option with the lowest leading digit with ties broken at random. We provide an expression for both the probability that this strategy selects the correct option and also the generalization to the probability of selecting the option with the lowest r significant digit string.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.042
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.281
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Simulation or modeling · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.042
Threshold uncertainty score0.222

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0420.281
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0040.002
Bibliometrics0.0050.005
Science and technology studies0.0020.013
Scholarly communication0.0060.014
Open science0.0050.005
Research integrity0.0060.006
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0090.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.053
GPT teacher head0.380
Teacher spread0.328 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designSimulation or modeling
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations4
Published2015
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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