Evaluating Facts and Clarity: the two sections with fewer than four choices

Cannot be determined is the answer, not a refusal to answer

You are given a short set of facts and asked whether a statement that follows is true, false, or impossible to decide from them. The third option is where the section is really measured: a statement can be entirely reasonable and still not follow from what you were told, and filling the gap from the world is exactly the habit being tested.

Watch the quantifiers. A fact about SOME never supports a conclusion about ALL, and that all of one thing is another does not tell you the reverse. And keep FALSE apart from CANNOT BE DETERMINED — false means the facts contradict the statement, not that they fail to support it.

Clarity is not about which sentence is shorter

You compare two versions of the same sentence and choose the one written more clearly. The unclear one is usually unclear for a nameable reason: a pronoun that could belong to either of two people, a describing phrase sitting next to the wrong noun, or two events run together so the order is lost. The shorter version is often the ambiguous one.

Why the number of choices matters

POST subtracts a fraction of a point for a wrong answer and nothing for a blank, and the fraction depends on how many choices there are. On a four-choice question a wrong answer costs a third of a point; on Evaluating Facts it costs a half; on a two-choice Clarity question it costs a full point. Guessing is worth nothing on average anywhere, and it is most expensive here.

Related guides

• The eleven subtests on the POST dispatcher battery
• Assigning Field Units and Setting Priorities: applying rules you have never seen
• How the POST dispatcher test is scored, and what counts as a pass