"Dee Flint" wrote:

Besides memorizing that way will lead to certain failure. The questions
and answers on the exam are worded the same way BUT the answers are
allowed to be in a different order and they are. The reason is to prevent
people memorizing the A, B, C, or D.

True. I would say the vast majority of people who "memorize" the question
pools do not actually "memorize" verbatim the questions and answers, but
instead simply familiarize themselves enough with the pools such that they
can recognize the correct answer on the examination, regardless of whether
it appears in position A, B, C, or D.

Granted, certain types of questions lend themselves to 'rote memorization'.
Definitions, for instance. An ohm is an ohm is not a watt. Most of the
regulations probably also fall into this category as well, as do things like
circuit diagram symbols. You just have to "know" where band limits are, and
what a NPN transistor "looks like".

I've always been a proponent of eliminating question pools, and instead
allowing computer programs to randomly generate question sets. No longer
would there be a "where on the HF 80m bands are you allowed to transmit CW?"
question with 4 static answers. Instead, the question could have 1 randomly
generated correct answer and 3 randomly generated detractors.

Such a test setup would at least ensure that folks taking the test have the
requisite knowledge base to pass the test, and didn't simply familiarize
themselves w/ the question pool enough to successfully pass the test.

73
KH6HZ