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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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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Questions based on Punctuation marks have been asked in competitive exams frequently. These concepts are really important if you are looking at some of the banking exams or exams like SNAP. It is a good way to check a person's 'Verbal Ability'. With the help of my friend Sanket, I have a compiled a set of some examples followed by some previous year questions that can help you understand the concept better. The Purpose of Punctuation: Punctuation is used to disambiguate a sentence by using spacing, conventional signs, and certain typographical devices Punctuation introduces appropriate paus

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In this post I would like to cover some of the basic ideas about personal interviews. Since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will try to be brief. Whom do the interviewers select? The candidate they “like” – so your job is to be “liked” by the panel. Attributes that normal panels like: Honesty Be ruthlessly honest with your answers You should know your subject You should understand your immediate environ Your answering should demonstrate analysis Listen to the words and the body language Answer the question asked Pane

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First of all, a very Happy Republic Day to all our students (and other visitors here). Republic Day honors the date on which the Constitution of India came into force on 26 January 1950 replacing the Government of India Act (1935) as the governing document of India. The Constitution was adopted by the Indian Constituent Assembly on 26 November 1949 and came into effect on 26 January 1950 with a democratic government system, completing the country's transition towards becoming an independent republic. 26 January was chosen as the Republic day because it was on this day in 1930 when the Decl

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Highest, Longest, Tallest, Largest, Smallest places form an important part of questions in competitive examinations like XAT, IIFT, IBPS, TISS, Bank PO etc. Below is a list of some of the most important Longest, Largest, Highest places around the World and in India. This post has been divided into two sections, Around the World and Inside India. In the first section, Around the World, all the places have been divided into sub-sections based on Longest, Largest, Highest, Tallest, Smallest and Biggest. In the second section, Inside India, all the places have been divided into sub-sections

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In our previous post on games and tournaments part-1, 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

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In Logical Reasoning very often we encounter problems based on games and 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 o

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Cyclicity of Remainders In this post I would like to discuss some of the really fundamental ideas that can be used to solve questions based on remainders. If you have just started your preparation for CAT Exam, you might find this article helpful. First of all, What I am trying to say above is that if you divide a^n by d, the remainder can be any value from 0 to d-1. Not only that, if you keep on increasing the value of ‘n’, you would notice that the remainders are cyclical in nature. What I am trying to say is that the pattern of remainders would repeat. Let me try to

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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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