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improve(ch12): replace weak/off-domain MC distractors with plausible alternatives - #32
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…alternatives Audited all 15 MC questions for distractor quality. The recurring issue was one obviously off-domain option per question (e.g. UDP protocols, CSV exports, encryption keys, cookie stores) that students could eliminate on sight without any subject knowledge. Changes per question: - Q1: Replace "stores all input in volatile memory" with a plausible-but-wrong data-type distinction distractor - Q2: Replace "require UDP multicast" with a Kafka-style offset distractor — the ideal wrong answer for this comparison question - Q6: Tighten Option C to a more credible performance/cost claim - Q7: Replace "export to CSV" with an app-level callback distractor (a real misconception about where CDC lives) - Q9: Replace gzip/merge-partitions with retention-policy-style distractors that sit closer to the correct answer domain - Q14: Replace "cryptographic signature" with a lateness-threshold distractor that sounds like a real watermark variant - Q16: Replace made-up "compacted log join" term with a real but incorrect join characterization - Q19: Replace "replicate nodes 10x" and "cookie store caching" with fault-tolerance-domain distractors - Q22: Replace "SSD write latency" with a data-sovereignty distractor that stays in the regulatory compliance domain
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Summary
Audited all 15 multiple choice questions in Chapter 12 (Stream Processing) for distractor quality. The recurring issue was one obviously off-domain option per question — distractors like UDP protocols, CSV exports, encryption keys, and cookie stores that students can immediately eliminate without any subject knowledge. This allows guessing between the remaining 3 options, undermining the quiz's diagnostic value.
Changes
Non-changes
Questions Q4, Q11, Q12, Q17, Q20, Q23 were left untouched — their distractors were already well-calibrated and required real subject knowledge to eliminate.
Design Principle
All revised distractors follow the rule used by Q12 (windows) and Q20 (idempotent operations) as benchmarks: every option should be plausible within the same conceptual domain as the correct answer, differing only in precision or applicability.