Strategies for Mocks

I just recently came across some great tricks and would love to share it with everyone.
So here they go:

VA general strategies:
1.Read an RC as if you are the author. Blank ur mind when u start the RCs. Ur individual opinion while reading/doing an RC is useless. So is you prior knowledge. The questions are asked from the viewpoint of the author, and you’ve got to answer them in that sense. Remember, for RCs, You DO NOT have any knowledge/opinion.

2.Read newspapers and enjoy them. Don’t read stupid weird articles just because you want to improve your VA. Read funny, sexy articles that you like and enjoy. It’s a much better way of improving your English than reading up on the etymology of words from thick red books.

3.Word-lists are stupid and a waste of time. They are not important for cat. Burn your word-lists.

DI general strategies:
1.Do NOT spend more time on a set just because you’ve already spent some time on it. Wasted time does not merit more time to be wasted. If after 20 minutes of reading a set, you do not understand it, the LEAVE it!

2.Practice! Practice only from mock-cats. The BRM's are generally for ppl who are going to give cat in 2010, and I expect none of you are like that.

QA general strategies:
1.Make sure you read ALL the questions! Even if they are from pathetic topics like PnC or Probability. This way, you’ll never feel like a fool later for not having read a question completely.

General strategies:
1.Give equal importance to the three sections in terms of time. This simple rule, whenever violated, has caused havoc. Do not allot less than 40 minutes for any section, whatever be the compulsion.

2.Your primary aim in all these mocks is to clear ALL the cut-off's in every paper. If you can clear ALL three cut-off's in cat, there’s a 99.99% chance of you clearing the total cut-off as well, and making it to the next stage.

3.Do not bother whether the paper is tough or not. Your job is to make sure that by the end of the paper you have read all the questions and feel happy that you’ve given it your best shot.

4.Remember, the Real competition is with yourself and your past scores. The zillion other people writing the mock are not your problem. It’s their problem that you are writing the mock as well.

DI Caselet No.3

A very intriguing case which i came across a couple of days ago and found seriously worthy of a mention.

In the following addition each capitalised letter stands for a unique digit from 0 to 9.

Further a particular digit may be represented by only one of the alphabets.


...A B C D
+ E B C B
------------
A F G A G

Q1. What is the value of F?
1) 6
2) 4
3) 1
4) 0

Q2. What is the value of BADGE?
1) 76183
2) 61738
3) 71638
4) None of these

Q3. What is the value of C?
1) 0
2) 3
3) 6
4) 5

Solution within a week.

Quant Question No.1

Here is a question which was a bit ambiguous and several found difficult.
Try it out.

Q. Find the no of ways in which 14 identical and indistinguishable balls can be divided into 3 groups?

1) 16
2) 17
3) 18
4) 19
5) 20

My approach:
there are 14 balls which are to be divided into 3 groups.

It is not mentioned that the the groups are distinct or the balls are to be placed in 3 different sacks or something like that.

It implies that we are just supposed to separate the total of 14 balls into 3 different groups and the groups are indistinguishable as well(Mentioned this as i saw a lot of confusion on the earlier pages).

So now we separate the balls into 3 groups in the following manner:

1. (1,1,12)(1,2,11)(1,3,10)....(1,6,7) ....6 ways
2. (2,2,10)(2,3,9)(2,4,8,)(2,5,7)(2,6,6)...5 ways

• Note that i have not considered the case of (2,1,11) as it will be similar to the one considered in the previous iteration.

3. (3,3,8,)(3,4,7)(3,5,6)......................3 ways
4. (4,4,6)(4,5,5)...............................2 ways
5. (6,6,2)........................................It should not be considered as already considered in iteration 2.

Add up and you get a total of 16 different ways of representing the 14 balls into 3 groups.

DI Caselet No.2

Four companies- Bharti, Hutch, Tata and Reliance bid for four projects A, B, C, D the bids for which were opened in that order. For each project the companies are ranked 1 to 4, with the company having the highest bid ranked 1 and the company with the lowest bid ranked 4. No two companies have the same rank for a particular project and each company has a different rank for each of the four projects.

Further,

(1) (1) Neither Hutch nor Bharti had rank 1 for project A or project D.

(2) (2) The bids for the project in which Reliance was ranked 3^rd was opened before the project in which Tata was ranked 3^rd but after the project in which Bharti was ranked 3^rd.

(3) (3) Tata was ranked 2^nd in the project A.

(4) (4) The bids for the project in which Hutch was ranked 2^nd was opened before the project in which Reliance was ranked 2^nd but after the project in which Bharti was ranked 2^nd.

Q1. Who was ranked 3^rd in project C?

a) (1) Hutch

b) (2) Bharti

c) (3) Reliance

d) (4) Tata

Q2. In project D, Reliance was ranked?

a) (1) 1^st

b) (2) 2^nd

c) (3) 3^rd

d) (4) 4^th

Q3. In which project was Hutch ranked 1^st?

a) (1) A

b) (2) B

c) (3) C

d) (4) D

Q4. In which project was Bharti ranked 4^th?

a) (1) A

b) (2) B

c) (3) C

d) (4) D

Solution will be posted within a week.

DI Caselet No. 1

There are 5 players- Sachin, Gopichand, Dhanraj, Paes and Anand- playing a different game among Cricket, Hockey, Badminton, Chess and Tennis. They live in 5 different cities- Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad. The following information is also known about them:

(1) (1) Paes plays neither cricket nor chess

(2) (2) Gopichand is not a chess player.

(3) (3) Anand does not play tennis and the tennis player is not from Delhi.

(4) (4) Anand and Dhanraj do not live in Chennai or Hyderabad and neither of them plays hockey or chess.

(5) (5) The person living in Chennai plays neither tennis nor badminton.

(6) (6) Sachin and Gopichand do not play tennis or badminton and they do not live in Delhi or Chennai.

(7) (7) The cricketer does not live in Hyderabad or Mumbai.

Based on the information given answer the following questions:

Q1. Who plays Badminton?

(1) (1) Gopichand

(2) (2) Dhanraj

(3) (3) Anand

(4) (4) Paes

(5) (5) Sachin

Q2. Who lives in Hyderabad?

(1) (1) Sachin

(2) (2) Dhanraj

(3) (3) Gopichand

(4) (4) Anand

(5) (5) Paes

Q3. Which of the following statement is FALSE?

(1) (1) The player who plays chess lives in Hyderabad.

(2) (2) The player who lives in Kolkata plays cricket.

(3) (3) The player who lives in Delhi plays chess.

(4) (4) The player who plays tennis lives in Mumbai.

(5) (5) None of the above.

Solutions will be posted within a week.