Reasoning for ibps clerk prelims: The best practice guide to crack reasoning for ibps clerk prelims
The section of reasoning for ibps clerk prelims is a section that tests your general intelligence, logic and problem solving abilities. Hence, reading the question to identify what aspect is being tested is very important. You should able to read the question to straightaway start untangling it. The key to excelling in reasoning for ibps clerk prelims is being able to identify the starting point of your solution. The question maybe quite lengthy and confusing, but if your concepts are damn clear, you will be able to decide that what condition or statement should be the start point of the solution and what next part of the question can be used to proceed with the solution. This skill can be sharpened with practice and therefore, solving such sets of reasoning for ibps clerk prelims will help you fetch a better performance.
Directions for the question set:
In a housing society, the newspaper boy keeps data of readers and notes down the sales figures of different newspapers and the gender of newspaper readers. The data is kept on a copy but unfortunately lost certain portions of the dairy. He has the following incomplete data:
Some more information that he remembered about the readers:
• Each reader only read one paper
• Half the readers either read Gujarat Samachar or Ahmedabad Mirror
• 40% of the total readers are female
• One third of the male readers read Sandesh. Also, there are female readers for Sandesh.
Question 1: What is the percentage of Ahmedabad Mirror readers among the overall readers?
(a) 12.5%
(b) 5%
(c) 0
(d) cannot be determined
Question 2: How many of the readers were both female and read the Ahmedabad Mirror?
(a) 0
(b) 8
(c) 4
(d) cannot be determined
Question 3: How many of the readers are both male and read the Gujarat Samachar?
(a) 8
(b) 5
(c) 11
(d) cannot be determined
Question 4: Among the Sandesh readers, what is the ratio of male to female persons?
(a) 3:2
(b) 1:2
(c) 2:3
(d) cannot be determined
Question 5: What is the proportion of Ahmedabad Mirror readers to the Gujarat Samachar readers?
(a) 0.33
(b) 0.5
(c) 0.25
(d) cannot be determined
Answers and Explanations: Click the down arrow to expand
We know the total number of female readers (16) and that they constitute 40% of the total readers (since each person reads only 1 newspaper). This means the total number of readers are 40. And total male readers will be 60% of 40= 24.
Also, half of the readers either read Gujarat Samachar or Ahmedabad Mirror . Number of people who read The Sandesh = Gujarat Samachar readers + Ahmedabad Mirror readers = 20 each
Therefore the number of Ahmedabad Mirror readers = 20 -15 = 5 Now we have one more information that 1/3rd of the male readers read Sandesh. i.e. = 1/3 x 24 = 8
Since a total of 24 male readers are there and 8 out of these belong to Sandesh and 5 to Ahmedabad Mirror, the balance have to belong to Gujarat Samachar = 24 – 8 – 5 = 11 Now total number of readers who read Sandesh = 20
Therefore, number of female readers of Sandesh = 12 as male readers are 8. Also since total readers and male readers of Ahmedabad mirror are both 5, hence we have 0 female readers for Ahmedabad mirror.
This means the remaining four female readers read Gujarat Samachar. Thus, we can construct the following table:
Answer 1: (a) The required percentage is = 5/40 × 100 = 12.5% The correct option is (a).
Answer 2: (a) We can see from the table above that the answer is 0. The correct option is (a).
Answer 3: (c) We can see from the table above that the answer is 11. The correct option is (c).
Answer 4: (c) We can see from the table above that the answer is 2:3. The correct option is (c).
Answer 5: (a) The required proportion is = 5/15 = 0.33 The correct option is (a).
Extra tips for reasoning for ibps clerk prelims:
• Prioritize the topics that you are the most confident about and attempt those first in the exam.
• Do not try to crack a problem of utmost difficulty while you have a lot of unseen questions ahead. Flag such questions and return back to them in the time that is pending.
• Solve questions of reasoning for ibps clerk prelims from various topics to sharpen your analytical and logical abilities.