As an astute man Mr. Gump once said, “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you going to get.” The Permutations and Combinations that life presents us daily is baffling and probably it is because of that inherent fear of choices and cases we get intimidated by such questions in the exam. I understand that Permutation and Combination is one of the dreaded topics but I hope that once you understand the fundas given below, your fear will reduce. Permutation and Combination Funda 1: De-arrangement If ‘n’ distinct items are arranged in a row, then the number of way

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Nike caused controversy with its advertising campaign during the 1996 Olympics by using the slogan, "You Don't Win Silver — You Lose Gold." Nike's use of this slogan drew harsh criticism from many former Olympic Silver medallists. In a way, it did undermine the importance of the second position but in Math things are often very different. Figuring out the second last digit is often tougher than figuring out the last digit. It is unlikely but definitely not impossible that in CAT you get a straightforward question that asks you to find out the second last digit of a number (abcpqr). In fe

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There are some topics in Quantitative Aptitude, like Permutation & Combination,  where you can easily find out the answer and the answer you calculate is there in the options but it turns out to be wrong. And then there are some topics in which you read the question, understand it but cannot even begin solving it. You get stuck at the first step and you have no idea about how to even approach the question. The irritating fact is that you understood the question properly. It happens very frequently with questions on Time Speed & Distance (TSD). I have always been a big advocate of

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  I guess my first fascination with problems of Time, Speed and Distance began when I first saw Henna. An important part of the story line  if you can call it that, saw Rishi Kapoor floating from India to Pakistan without drowning. I remember arguing with my friends that if could float for that long – he could swim back to India as well. My friends nullified the argument by saying: Speed River > Speed Rishi Kapoor I know that the reference is a little dated for most readers of this post, but Zeba Bhaktiyar made me look beyond reason. In this post we will discuss some of the id

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In the previous post we discussed lines, triangles, parallelograms, trapeziums, polygons etc. Now, we will discuss other expanses of geometry which are vital as, the questions on these topics are asked repeatedly in CAT. Let us look at few of the fundas / formulae on these topics that are often neglected by students and can fetch some crucial marks in the exam. Funda 1: Angle made by Secants       2 .   In both these cases, PA * PB = PC * PD   Funda 2: Common Tangents     eg: Note: The two centers

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I got a lot of feedback via emails and texts that people are looking for a post on geometry. I have been avoiding it for sometime because of two main reasons: a)      It is not one of my strong areas. b)      It takes a lot of time to draw the diagrams that are sometimes required to explain the fundas. The questions on geometry are the trickiest and consumes the maximum amount of time as compared to the questions on other topics in Quantitative aptitude that is why, I have compiled a list of fundas that you might find helpful in solving CAT level questions. I am splittin

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let me first list down the topics that I am going to cover in this particular blogpost: Number of factors of a given number Number of even factors or odd factors of a given number Sum of all factors of a given number Sum of all even factors or odd factors of a given number   We know that a number N can be written as a product of its factors as given below   N = ap x bq x cr … Here a,b,c… are prime factors of N & p,q,r … are the powers of the prime factors of N.   In such a case the number of factors of N are given by the formula &

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In my previous post on games and tournaments, we discussed about two of the popular types of questions when it comes to games and tournament questions. So, if you are looking for questions on new types of data representation or questions based on seeding in a tennis tournament, probably you should read that. However, there is another popular type of questions with respect to Games and Tournaments and that is – Football / Hockey tournament questions in which we have to find out Goals scores, winners, ties, etc. In such tournaments, all competitors play a fixed number of matches. Points

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In Logical Reasoning very often we encounter problems based on games of tournaments. The first thing that as a CAT taker you need to realize is that such tournament based format offers the examiner a multitude of options. So, there cannot be a set formula for solving such kind of questions. However, if you look at the CAT papers of past few years – a pattern seems to emerge. Let us discuss couple of them. Type 1: The questions are typically in a set where the data will be either in the standard tabular format or a format which you would never find on Cricinfo or for that matter any ot

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The concept of ‘divide and conquer’, derived from the Latin phrase ‘Divide et impera’, was put into use effectively by everyone from Caesar to Napoleon to The British in India. Even Gaddafi tried using the same but as current events show us – he wasn’t very effective. Dividing rather divisibility rules to be specific can come in really handy at times in solving problems based on Number Systems. The standard rules which nearly all of us are very comfortable with are the ones for 2n and 5n. For these all that one needs to do is look at the last ‘n’ digits of the number. If

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