Appendix C. Exam day guide
Before you start
- Prepare a quiet place, a stable internet connection and a charged device.
- You have 35 minutes for 25 questions: an average of 1 minute 24 seconds each.
- Check your progress: aim to complete question 10 by the 12-minute mark and question 20 by the 24-minute mark. Mark difficult questions and move on.
How to read a question
- Read the question first. Check whether it asks for the most appropriate answer, two suitable answers or a sequence.
- Find the bold conditions. These distinguish correct answers. Interpret what they rule out. External publication suggests verification and approval; hard-to-reverse actions suggest human approval; recent information suggests current evidence; high volume and fast responses suggest small models or batch processing.
- Combine at least two conditions. A good question has only one option meeting both. An option meeting just one is a trap.
- Judge options by principles. Attach a key term to explain why each action is right or wrong: knowledge cutoff, inherited permissions, baseline and so on.
Signals that help eliminate wrong answers
| Warning sign | Example | Related chapter |
|---|---|---|
| Treating specificity or fluency as accuracy | "The numbers are specific, so I trust them" | Chapter 1 |
| Treating consistency as truth | "Repeated questions give the same answer, so it is correct" | Chapter 1 |
| Solving problems through emphasis | "Write 'never make mistakes' three times" | Chapter 2 |
| Unnecessarily heavy tools | "Start with an agent or API for a one-off task" | Chapter 3 |
| External actions without approval | "Delegate sending as well, because that is faster" | Chapter 3 |
| Confusing settings dimensions | "Disable training and administrators cannot see it" | Chapter 4 |
| Skipping verification | "Accuracy is high, so remove human review" | Chapter 4 |
| Treating usage as outcomes | "Question counts increased, so it succeeded" | Chapter 5 |
Tips by question format
- Single-select: The longest or most cautious option is not necessarily correct. Choose by whether all conditions are met.
- Multiple-select: Check how many answers are required. Selecting even one too many or too few earns no points.
- Statement evaluation: Even if the initial judgment is right, mark No when the reason following "because" is wrong. Check judgment and reason separately.
- Ordering: Ask which earlier result each step uses as input. Steps establishing comparison foundations, such as criteria, baselines and success conditions, generally come first.
- Matching: Eliminate definite pairs first. If one choice may remain unused, look for the choice that is not a core requirement of any item.
The final five minutes
- Return to marked questions and reread the bold conditions.
- Change an initial answer only when you have identified a new condition, not out of vague anxiety.
- Check that no questions remain unanswered.