40-60-80 Rule

B

bartok

New member
Joined
Jun 18, 2026
Messages
0
Reaction score
0
What are your thoughts on the usefulness of using this rule to determine your possible mark.
 
its a way for them to not tell us what we truly got. its as simple as that. it comes in handy when there is a debate.
 
I think it is relatively useless, but it does provide some color. It is most useful in combination with a calculation of theoretical max/min scores. One thing the CFAI ranges provide iwith certainty is your maximum and minimum possible score.
 
That's exactly how CFAI grades, so it's pretty foolproof in my mind
 
There are some former graders on here, aren't there? I'd like to hear from them. I guess it's all we've got, though.

I think CFAI should give you your score if you fail, but not if you pass. I took a test like this (can't remember what it was) and their reasoning was they didn�t want people to use a high score to market themselves as somehow superior but at the same time wanted to give people who failed an idea of how close they were and where they needed to improve. It makes sense to me.

I suppose that if they revealed failing scores, a lot of people who though they were on the bubble and actually bombed wouldn�t retake which means less revenue for CFAI...
 
I'm sort-of a believer in 40-60-80 as a decent way of estimating middle of the road papers. I came up with some much fancier stuff playing around one day and decided that without a ton of info we don't have about distributions or correlations, 40/60/80 is almost as good as any other thing I came up with and much easier.
 
It's crap, but it's probably the best crap you got. You'll learn that this is often the case with estimates in finance. Firms hire guys like Joey to cut the crap, but at the end of the day, estimates are just that, and they're crap.

If JoeyD says it is the best we got, I say go with it.
 
I still prefer the Pass/Fail Rule. It seems to be a little more useful in getting your charter.
 
On an individual basis, 40/60/80 is useless.

If you passed, you passed. Do you really need to wipe you brow and go "whew!" if yo passed with a low result or pat your self on the back if the number is high?

If you failed you failed. Close only counts with horseshoes and handgrenades.

If you failed you get much more meaningfull feedback by looking at the detailed section breakdown to see where your weaknesses (below 50%) are than by looking at a best guestimate score.

The only real value with this methodology is that by looking across all of the 40/60/80 results you can get a pretty good sense of where the minimum passing score is located.

Oh, this also helps us identify morons in the candidate pool by finding those people who fail, look at their 40/60/80 score and start threads about asking for regrades.
 
For the record, I enjoy self back-patting. As self-touching goes, it's pretty inoffensive.

In that same vein, I was messing around with anothere question related to this on http://www.analystforum.com/phorums/read.php?13,581358. Yet again, I come to the conclusion that there may be better estimators, but 40/60/80 ain't bad.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top