An introduction to question types

The data-Representation can be broadly classified as Tables, Graphs, and Caselets.

A. TABLE in tabular form the data is systematically arranged in horizontal rows and
vertical columns with captions/ heading. Grand total figures may be given in the
table itself or separately also. A title tells you what that table encompasses. Please
carefully read all tittles, subtitles, and notes/footnotes. Read it carefully or
you may even end up confusing important things and end up with wrong
answers. Units of measurement are given along with captions, in data or
separately also.

For example the following table show the hypothetical averages of 5 batsmen
over the last five years .
Batsmen over the years
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
Lara 41 39 22 65 45
Tendulkar 88 24 78 15 66
Inzamam 7 77 81 41 25
Steve Waugh 24 32 36 41 28
Dravid 32 33 34 35 36

While solving question based on tabulated information, take care of the following.

1 Read the whole question carefully especially the title, caption and unit of
measurement. Don’t waste time browsing through the data.
2 Analyze the possible answer before calculation. Most of the question only call for
an approximate answer and it may be possible to round off thus saving time and
effort
3 Make sure to express your answer in the correct units. The units of measurement
in question and given answer do not match, and then conversion is required.

B GRAPHS – Graphs give you a bird’s eye view of the entire data and therefore the
information presented is easily understood. But graphs give you only an
approximate idea of data unlike tables which depict data precisely.
However, the graphs are more vivid in depicting trends like growth,
plateaus. They can be of various types
1. Bar Graphs
2. Line Graphs
3. Cumulative Bar Graph
4. Pie Graph
5. Combination Graph
1. Bar Graphs-Bar graphs use two axis for better repersenation of data over two
crietai.her in each year ,the avarges of the five batsmen are shown.Not always are
the bars having a numvber on top of them and sometimes this can cause
confusion.

100 88
77 7881
80
65 66
60
41 4141 45
39 3634 36
40 32 3233 35
24 24 28
25
22
20 15
7
0
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

Lara Tendulkar Inzamam Steve Waugh Dravid

2. Stacked graph/ Cumulative Bar Graph-in this type of a graph, all data of one type
is stacked over the other for a year. This “ stack” can be expressed in percentage
as well wherein all players average in one year adds up to 100 .

300

250
34

200 36 Dravid
33 36
32 35 Steve Waugh
150 24 32 28 Inzamam
81 41
7
25 Tendulkar
100 77 41 Lara
88 66
15
78
50 24
65
41 39 45
22
0
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
3. Line Graphs-the various lines represent the players scores.

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

Lara Tendulkar Inzamam

Steve Waugh Dravid

4. Pie Graph-the pie chart is a cake like representation of data. Here the entire “pie”
is broken into percentagesadding up to 100%. One % =3.6 degrees

1998

Dravid
17% Lara
Lara
21%
Steve Tendulkar
Waugh Inzamam
13%
Steve Waugh
Inzamam Tendulkar Dravid
4% 45%
 5. Combination Graph - combination graphs combines data of one graph with that of
another/some other. These may look intimidating but essentially have to be
tackled one at a tome and are rather easy.

C .Caselets – This is the waterloo for most students. Caselets are essentially data, which
is not in the form of a graph/table, but in a paragraph form. The data is in an unprocessed
form so you need to make it palatable – You do this by doing some precalculations.
Sometimes making a table or diagram of the given information and filling in the rest by
calculations, makes it very easy.

D. Puzzles/structural diagrams – Again, these question types are considered tough by

students. In these questions it does make sense making a table or diagram of the given
information .To be comfortable with these types, you need to have practiced puzzles
beforehand and have no mental block for them. CAT has had at least 5 to 10 such
problems over the past few years.