Cracking IBPS Probationary Officer exam is undoubtedly what every bank job aspirant aims at. Needless to say that with more than 10 lakh candidates appearing for the exam each year, the competition is highly stiff. Out here, it is important to highlight the significance of the reasoning section in your IBPS PO preparation. It carries a weight age of 50 marks (50 questions) and can be really scoring. One of the best bank coaching institutes in Delhi has analyzed the pattern of IBPS PO 2014 and provided the segment wise analysis of the Reasoning section.
The breakup of the Reasoning section is as follows:
- Data Sufficiency: Questions on Data Sufficiency are a regular feature in all IBPS exams. The overall level of difficulty of these questions is not very high. However, if you don’t read these questions carefully you may be in for trouble. It is important to pay attention to the language of the question, which can be a little tricky sometimes. You must be able to understand whether the information (data) given to you is enough to answer the question asked. You need not solve a Data Sufficiency question fully and get the exact value. But, you must be able to find out how much information is required to answer the question.
- Puzzles: You can expect one set of puzzles with around 5 questions or two sets of short puzzles with 2 or 3 questions each. The good thing about a puzzle is that once you have figured out the situation in the puzzle, you will get all the questions right. It is recommended that you use a tabular/grid approach to solve these questions. Keep extracting information from the question statements and keep filling it in the table. Once you have filled in all the blanks which are there in the table, your job is done. Now you can simply refer to the table and mark the right answers.
- Mathematical Inequality: These are Arithmetical Reasoning questions. To solve these questions you must be comfortable with basic mathematical operations such as greater than, less than, greater than or equal to, less than or equal to etc. Solving these questions is quite like solving questions on linear equations. However, attention must be paid to the direction of inequality. The difficulty level of Mathematical In equations (Inequalities) is increased by denoting the standard signs of inequalities with symbols such as @, $, #, ? Etc.
- Syllogisms: These questions are based on Inferential Reasoning, which requires conclusions to be drawn on the basis of the information given in the form of statements. The validity of the conclusions given in the options needs to analyze. The recent trend has been that possibilities are also given in the options which make the questions trickier than before. Syllogisms are usually solved by students with the help of Venn diagrams. Although the Venn diagram approach is conceptually sound, yet it can be time consuming. Therefore, the experts at the centre for best bank PO coaching in Delhi have come up with sure-shot time saving methods for solving syllogisms. You can seek guidance from them to learn these methods.
- Seating Arrangement: In seating arrangement question sets certain conditions are laid out on the basis of which you have to determine the order in which individuals will have to be seated around a circular or a square table. You must definitely attempt such questions as they are quite scoring and once you are able to find out the exact order of seating, you will get all the questions right. Seating arrangement questions are somewhat like puzzles, but their overall difficulty level is lower than that of puzzles.
- Input-Output: This topic focuses on examples where a word or a number machine processes a given input to generate a certain output. You will have to understand how the machine works. The machine may perform any of the following operations: numerical, symbolic, alphabetical, sequential etc. Once you have analyzed these operations, you have to process the given data in the same way as the machine does and find out the correct output. It is important to practice sufficient number of input-output questions so that you don’t take much time in understanding how a machine operates.
- Logical Reasoning: Topics such as Ranking, Direction Sense, Series, Blood Relations, Alphabet Test, Coding-Decoding, Analogy, Statement-Assumption, Statement-Argument, Statement-Course of Action and Statement-Conclusion comprise the Logical Reasoning part of the Reasoning section. A total of around 10 to 12 questions are there from this part. You can expect one or two questions from each of these topics which have been mentioned.
Conclusion: While preparing for IBPS PO exam, you must take into account the analysis of the Reasoning section provided in this article. It will help you plan and strategize your preparation for this section. Moreover, it will be instrumental in helping you clear the cut-off for Reasoning, which for IBPS 2014 was 10 marks.
