Which session should we focus on?

Question

Here is my solution that shows how to take your weak spots and utilize "effort" required to maximize your final score through improving the more valuable sessions as you continue to score your progress.https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wh54CEa35qTGUiuwm4TIQ2IFZemkJl7b2_IC9kDNPEw/edit?usp=sharingIt is homemade and I was not to frilly about it like if I was producing it for someone else or anything.  See the interjected instructional notes for more info on using the sheet.The biggest assumption is how much you can improve that session by focusing on it rather than another. (right now its all a 50% improvement, thereby cutting your 'wrong answer %' in half)For me, it was useful to see how at first I thought I should focus on Micro Economics as it was very low and my other Econ sessions were looking relatively pretty good. However, because it is theoretically such a small percent of the test, my sheet showed me that improving the Micro session by 20%points would only bring me HALF as many final exam points than improving  ethics session by 12%points. I knew ethics was "worth more", but it seemed relatively good already at 75%, This exercise forced me to realize that it is still the most important topic to improve even when you are scoring well in it.Caveat: As some of you great CFA go-getters will attempt to explain: sometimes it will take way more time to improve one thing over the other, I even saw some great work on 'weak area %' per 'page of reviewing material'. Some stuff is all graphs and other stuff just wont sit in your head without dumping out.  That is why the Effort row is yours to tinker with as you compile your progress and sort out where to focus your time. Keep in mind that this is measuring stuff by basis points on large assumptions, so any improvements is welcome. I think the biggest utility in many ways is to add more mock tests ;-)Poke holes and feel free to comment in the sheet as well as this thread.Thank you for the opportunity to share with you.

DigitalWizard · Answer

Thanks @fabian, I think it is a great tool to see how things are going, it works best when you have a lot of data points and a good representation on how much effort it will take to increase a low score.  Not unlike the subjectivity of valuations in the real world, I can come up with a handful of "reliable" models that differ in their results by 50%. ;-)Well good news I've added a few more mock test results to my own copy of this spreadsheet (I didn't change the public facing one). And by my recent small improvements in all the other areas, it accentuates EVEN MORE that Ethics is what I need to focus on to gain the most amount of points on the exam.  Crazy right? I just can't get enough ethics, I think so many mock ethics questions are so judgment based or assumption based, it is hard to score more than 80% on these pretend questions. Either that or I just can't seem to get all the little tricky words they use interpreted into the applicable standards. ;-)

fabian · Answer

Wow. Pretty detailed stuff!