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That's a general problem with the interpretation of test answers. What an appropriately penalized scoring scheme for a multiple choice tests does is set the expected value of guessing to zero, providing an unbiased estimator of performance for students who guess randomly.

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Ah. I didn't realize he was doing this on a multiple choice test. It makes complete sense in that context. The Spanish threw me - none of my language courses had multiple choice exams.

I've seen people try and take this scoring scheme out of the multiple choice arena and into a more general program. However, when the answer space is infinite, the expected value for guessing is already zero, so there really isn't any point, besides sadistically torturing students.

Sorry, I should have clarified-- my boss is Spanish but works in computational biology, not Spanish lang/lit.

In the real world "I don't know" has more utility than a wrong answer. So you can argue that education should follow that route, too.

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