EPSO Numerical Reasoning study guide
EPSO Numerical Reasoning · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The EPSO numerical reasoning test is the numerical component of the computer-based reasoning battery used in European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) competitions to build reserve lists for the EU institutions. It is aimed at graduates applying for administrator (AD) or assistant (AST) profiles, and at specialists whose competition includes a reasoning battery. The EPSO Numerical Reasoning study guide has 10 sections and about 4,044 words.
01Percentage Calculations and Percentage Change
EPSO numerical reasoning leans on percentages more than on any other single skill. The questions rarely ask for a bare percentage: they ask you to move between a value, a base and a change, often twice, and to decide which of the three is the base in a particular sentence.
431 words, about 2 min02Ratios, Proportions and Scaling
Ratio questions test whether you can hold the distinction between part-to-part and part-to-whole, and whether you can chain two ratios into a single three-way ratio. Almost all of them reduce to finding the size of one part.
419 words, about 2 min03Averages, Weighted Averages and Combined Groups
Average questions in EPSO papers are almost never "add these and divide". They are weighted-average, combined-group or missing-value problems, and the fastest route is nearly always to work with sums rather than averages.
415 words, about 2 min04Rates, Speed, Distance and Time
Rate questions combine three quantities - rate, quantity and time - and the difficulty in EPSO items is almost always unit conversion or averaging rather than the formula itself. speed = distance / time ; rearranged, distance = speed × time and time = distance / speed.
411 words, about 2 min05Fractions, Decimals and Order-of-Magnitude Estimation
This domain is about speed and sanity-checking. Many EPSO items cannot comfortably be solved exactly in the time available, and are designed so that a two-significant-figure estimate picks the right option out of four plausible ones.
374 words, about 2 min06Table and Chart Interpretation: Absolute versus Relative Values
EPSO presents data in tables, bar charts, line charts and pie charts, and the dominant error is reading a relative figure where an absolute one is asked for, or the reverse. Read the units first : thousands, millions, percentages, index points, per capita.
428 words, about 2 min07Work Rates, Production and Resource Allocation
Work-rate items ask how long tasks take when effort combines, or how much output a set of resources produces. The arithmetic mirrors speed questions, but the standard error is averaging completion times.
392 words, about 2 min08Financial and Budget Arithmetic: Costs, Revenue and Indexation
Financial arithmetic in EPSO papers means cost, revenue, margin, indexation and budget variance, typically framed in public-sector, procurement or programme-budget language with VAT and multi-year profiles. Profit = revenue − cost.
362 words, about 2 min09Probability, Combinatorics and Simple Counting
Probability items in EPSO tests stay at the level of counting outcomes and combining simple events. The difficulty is choosing between "and" and "or", and knowing whether order matters.
367 words, about 2 min10Data Sufficiency and Logical Validation of Numerical Statements
Data-sufficiency items supply a question plus two statements and ask whether the statements, alone or together, determine the answer. You are not required to compute the value - only to establish that exactly one value exists.
445 words, about 2 min