Logical Reasoning questions – levels of difficulty

Pattern of questions on your test screen or even the question paper is defined and categorized under specific question types. These questions in books are marked under different levels of difficulty. Logical Reasoning questions appear in the Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning sections. 4-6 questions are asked from the LR part. Solving two to three of these sets can be enough to go beyond the sectional cut-off.

LR question types can be of the following kind:

Family Tree

Family tree questions are based on generations of a family, including their spouses and other relatives. Cut-offs in a 25 question set range from 7 to 9 questions. Two question sets can thus prove to be enough in a tough paper. If the paper is on the easier side, cut-off can extend to 11 to 15 questions.

Seating around a table

The snippets of information in these questions are meant to arrive at seating positions of a group of people around a table. The label for the question type makes evident the expected result. The complexity of these question types can be gauged from the percentage of people who are able to solve these questions. It seems easy but statistics speak volumes about the truth that one finds hard to believe.

Information tables

These give information on multiple attributes. All of these attributes are marked against a set of people to arrive at the final table with information on values for all attributes for the set of people mentioned. The number of attributes may vary, ranging from 2 to 5.

Syllogisms

These are inference based questions. These are used to infer about entities from a set of statements given. These can be solved using Venn diagrams.  Read, How to solve Venn diagram question in reasoning section. Set theory including Venn diagrams is taught in schools in class IX and X. This does not require extensive data analysis. All the statements need to be taken into account simultaneously and the answer statement is supposed to have the solution derived through connecting all the entities through a Venn diagram.

Numeric and pictorial patterns

The number of these questions ranges from 10 to 15. Such questions require close observation and a fixed pattern to arrive at the solution. These included alpha-numeric series, missing numbers and finding the figure. Numeric patterns are numeric puzzles with a series of numbers. This could from a set of mathematical series, simple arithmetic or a set with a particular type of numbers, for instance prime numbers and a mathematical treatment of the same. Pictorial patterns Pictorial patterns are a question type that requires close examination of figures. One is required to find the figure that can be put in continuation with the rest of the figures as part of a series. The only difference in this case being that this is a series of figures rather than numbers.

Logical reasoning questions can thus be solved through some effort. Acquainting oneself with the question types that are asked for is all that is needed to take sectional tests. Read,   Practice Tests: A mantra to succeed in SSC. These are more like riddles that do not come across as a pain to solve. These make for an interesting question type. Solving these can also be a leisure activity or a favourite pastime with people. LR questions, available through question banks, in the online or offline format, prove to be a good pastime.