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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What are Logical Connectives? Logical connectives are basically words or symbols which are used to form a complex sentence from two simple sentences by connecting them. Some Logical Connectives are – If, Only if, When, Whenever, Unless etc. Questions based on statements formed using logical connectives are simpler than other questions of exam so it will be beneficial to take command on this topic. These type of sentences consist of two parts, one is Cause and one is Effect. Usually Cause is present after the connectives. Some examples are like- 1. If you are in navy, you have to wear u

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Escalators has now become a topic from which questions are asked quite frequently in CAT. Today, we are going to see the theory behind escalator questions and solve them through both equations and ratios. Once you are through with the concept and are able to solve the questions in this article, you can solve any question from this topic Escalator questions are very similar to the upstream and downstream questions. In a stream, the direction of flow of water is constant whereas, the escalators move in both directions. Escalator questions can be confusing as sometimes, questions might not

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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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Descartes’ rule of signs is used to get information on the number of real zeros of a polynomial. This is useful in the cases where the graph is not provided for a polynomial. You need to know that for equations with real coefficients, complex roots occur in pairs. As a result, any equation with an odd degree must have at least 1 real root. This combined with Descartes rule generates some interesting insights, as we will discuss in following examples. Let us understand the rule with an example: f (x) = x5 – 3x4 + 3x3 + 5x2 – x + 5 This rule doesn’t help us actually find the

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UNDERSTANDING BASE SYSTEMS: The numbers that we commonly use are the decimal number. The system is called the decimal system. Why is it called the decimal system ? It is because it has 10 symbols - 0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ,6 , 7 , 8 , 9 . For example : 85 means - 8 * 10^1 + 5 * 10^0 Here , 10 is known as the base of the decimal system. In this article , we will learn about other bases , how to express various numbers in such bases and questions according to CAT , XAT and OMETs. BASE :  It is the number of distinct symbols used in a particular number system. For example So, depending o

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Whenever someone starts a new business, some money is needed to start the business. This initial investment is called the CAPITAL. In large companies & enterprises, it is very much possible that there could be more than one person investing the money. These could be either partners or shareholders. Both mean the same thing except for the liability they have for the business. It is easier for a shareholder to quit the business, by selling his SHARES in the stock exchange, whereas a partner cannot leave just like that. So, what is a Share? In simple terms, it is a certificate issued b

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In the series on confusing words (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) we looked at words that sound similar or look similar but mean different things. There is another class of words you should be careful about - these are words that are often used interchangeably (and wrongly at that, I must add). This generally leads to bad writing than bad comprehension when used. You do not need to look far away for instances of not knowing the difference between these similar sounding words. Just ask any MBA aspirant whether have any preferences for specialization and a lot of them say ‘Marketing’. Just fol

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We all have learned about the eight parts of speech in our school days. If you recall, these parts of speech form the building blocks of English grammar. But, how is it important for CAT? Well, learning about the various parts of speech and the related rules will help you answer the grammar-based questions accurately. Such questions may feature in form of error detection, sentence correction, fill in the blanks and word usage. In other words, the grammar section holds a crucial weight in CAT verbal ability. An interesting thing about words is that they can be of more than one type depen

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