Reasoning for Competitive Exams

A test of reasoning is the way through which organisations measure the mental and thinking ability of a candidate, thus it is a very important test in almost every competitive exam. All major recruitment exams have a test of reasoning to measure the General Intelligence of a person.

Broadly reasoning is said to be categorised into Inductive Reasoning and Deductive Reasoning. The Inductive reasoning is usually based on patterns and observation of those patterns whereas the deductive reasoning is a part where students must use logic to form a conclusion from the given scenario or set of statements.

Most of the questions asked in banking and insurance sector exams fall in the category of deductive reasoning ability. If you are preparing for IBPS PO, IBPS Clerk, NABARD, RBI, SBI Clerk, SBI PO, IBPS RRB and any other exam you must practice reasoning questions thoroughly as you have to face this section in both prelims and main examination.

Topics to Cover in Reasoning

If you are preparing for banking and insurance sector examinations, then you must practice the following topics of reasoning ability for prelims and main exam:

• Puzzles: Month based puzzles, day based puzzles, random arrangement puzzles, floor based puzzles, order and ranking based puzzles, box based puzzles
• Seating Arrangement : Circular Table, Linear, Parallel Rows, Square Table Seating Arrangement
• Blood Relation : Blood Relation based puzzle, coded blood relation
• Direction Sense : Direction Sense based puzzle, coded direction sense questions.
• Inequality :Single line inequality, double line inequality, coded inequality
• Coding Decoding: There are different types of coding decoding questions in the reasoning section.
• Alpha-Numeric-Symbol Series: Here a series of alphabets, symbols and numbers is given followed by a set of questions where the candidate has to perform certain operations on the give series and mark the answer accordingly.
• Alphabet Based Questions: Here a certain word(s) is given, and students are asked to find pairs of other meaningful words or perform specified operations.
• Number based questions: To perform simple mathematical operations on given set of numbers.
• Syllogism: Conditional Syllogism, Categorical Syllogism, Disjunctive Syllogism
• Logical Reasoning: This is a whole new branch of reasoning ability test and it tests a student’s higher order thinking capacity. It includes sub-topics like statement and assumptions, cause and effect, strength of an argument, passage inference.

Other miscellaneous topic of reasoning ability includes Machine Input Output, calendars, condition-based questions, Data Sufficiency which is a mix of all other topic stated above.

Here are the list of all the topics in the bank exams.

• Statement and Conclusions
• Statement and Assumption
• Course of Action
• Cause and Effect
• Statement and Inference
• Strength of Argument
• Alphabet Based
• Puzzles
• Coding Decoding
• Direction and Distance
• Blood Relation
• Ordering and Ranking
• Inequality
• Syllogism
• Input - Output
• Scheduling Puzzle
• Tabular Puzzle
• Data Sufficiency
• Collocations