Question

Many mathematics teachers advise their students that if every question in an examination carries the same marks, they should spend about equal amount of time on each question even though they cannot answer some of the questions within the time limit. Comment on this strategy based on what you learned about decision making in this course. Explain your answer in terms of no more than one bias.

(Additional Information)

Biases in Decision Making

1. Sunk cost

1.1 Repay monetary losses in the past

1.2 Tendency to maintain cohesiveness and consistency of life pattern

2. Framing effect

2.1 Wording of alternatives

2.2 Background Information

2.2.1 Integration of losses reduces their effects; segregation of gains increases their effects

2.2.2 Reference point effect: the reference price

3. Intransitivity of preferences

4. Elimination by aspects

Answer 1

The strategy here is answering every question in the examination by taking equal amount of time per answer even though they cannot answer some of the questions within the time limit. The teacher gave priority to answering questions within the time limit than giving quality answer by writing the complete answer to questions which required more time.

I would like to explain this decision making based on the bias Intransitivity of preferences. A decision maker chooses one aspect over the other refering to his/her preference. He/she gives priority to one alternative or option over other and makes a hierarchy of list of options according to the importance each option holds and take decisions accordingly.

Here in this senario, basing on intransitivity principal, the teachers decided to give priority to time management over quality of a complete answer as he/she belived that in an examination competing all answers within the time frame is more important than taking more time to complete a lengthy answer required by some question.