IB Security Assistant cheat sheet

The Constitution of India was adopted on 26 November 1949 and came into force on 26 January 1950; Dr. B. R. Ambedkar chaired the Drafting Committee.

Fundamental Rights occupy Part III (Articles 12-35); Fundamental Duties were added by the 42nd Amendment (1976) on the recommendation of the Swaran Singh Committee.

The President is elected indirectly by an electoral college of elected MPs and elected MLAs; the impeachment-style removal procedure is in Article 61.

The Reserve Bank of India was nationalised in 1949 and is headed by a Governor; monetary policy is set by the six-member Monetary Policy Committee.

ISRO was formed in 1969; Chandrayaan-3 soft-landed near the lunar south pole in August 2023, and Aditya-L1 studies the Sun from the L1 point.

India has 28 states and 8 union territories; the Rajya Sabha has a maximum strength of 250 members, and the Lok Sabha 552.

Bharat Ratna is India's highest civilian award, instituted in 1954; the Param Vir Chakra is the highest wartime military decoration.

The United Nations was founded in 1945 with headquarters in New York; India was a founding member, and the Security Council has five permanent members with veto power.

Cyclones in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea are named from a regional list coordinated by WMO/ESCAP panel members, so India contributes proposed names.

Percentage change = (new - old) / old x 100; successive changes of a% and b% give a net change of a + b + ab/100 percent.

Simple interest = P x R x T / 100; compound amount = P(1 + R/100)^T, with half-yearly compounding using R/2 and 2T periods.

Speed = distance / time; to convert km/h to m/s multiply by 5/18, and to convert m/s to km/h multiply by 18/5.

For a train of length L crossing a platform of length P at speed S, time = (L + P)/S; for boats, downstream speed = boat + stream and upstream = boat - stream.

Average = sum of values / number of values; if a group average is A and a new member raises it by d, the new member's value = A + d(n+1).

Ratio and proportion: if a:b = c:d then ad = bc; to divide a sum N in ratio a:b:c, the shares are N x a/(a+b+c) and so on.

Profit percent = profit / cost price x 100; selling price = cost price x (100 + profit%)/100, and successive discounts use the same compounding rule as percentages.

Permutations nPr = n!/(n-r)! and combinations nCr = n!/(r!(n-r)!); nCr = nC(n-r), and the number of diagonals of an n-sided polygon is n(n-3)/2.

Work: if A finishes in a days and B in b days, together they finish in ab/(a+b) days; pipes filling and emptying are combined with opposite signs.

In syllogisms, a conclusion follows only if it is true in every possible Venn arrangement of the premises; 'some A are B' does not imply 'some B are not A'.

For blood relations, draw a family tree and fix gender from words like 'brother', 'aunt', 'son'; a person's 'only son' has no brothers.

Coding-decoding: check letter positions (A=1 ... Z=26) first; opposite letters sum to 27 (A-Z, B-Y), a common shift rule.

Direction sense: use a compass sketch, treat left/right turns as 90 degrees, and compute net displacement with Pythagoras when turns are perpendicular.

Series completion: test differences, then ratios, then squares/cubes, then alternating sub-series; prime-based and n^2 +/- k series are common.

Seating arrangement: fix the most constrained person first, note that 'facing north' means left is west, and 'facing south' reverses left and right.

Statement-assumption questions accept only unstated necessary premises; restatements of the statement and extreme claims are usually not assumptions.

Clock problems: the minute hand gains 5.5 degrees per minute on the hour hand, and hands coincide every 65 5/11 minutes.

Calendar problems: a normal year shifts the day of week by 1 and a leap year by 2; 100 years give 5 odd days and 400 years give 0.

Subject-verb agreement: a singular subject takes a singular verb; 'one of the + plural noun' takes a singular verb, as in 'one of the boys is'.

Collective nouns (team, jury, committee) take a singular verb when acting as a unit and a plural verb when members act individually.

Articles: 'a' before consonant sounds, 'an' before vowel sounds (an hour, a university); 'the' is used for superlatives and unique things.

Prepositions of time: 'in' for months/years, 'on' for days and dates, 'at' for clock times; 'since' takes a point of time and 'for' a duration.

Active to passive: object becomes subject, verb becomes be + past participle, and the agent is introduced by 'by'; tense of the original is preserved.

Reported speech: present tenses shift to past, 'will' becomes 'would', and 'this/here/tomorrow' become 'that/there/the next day'.

Common error pairs: 'affect' (verb) vs 'effect' (noun), 'lie/lay', 'its/it's', 'fewer' for countable and 'less' for uncountable nouns.

Synonyms and antonyms are best judged by substituting the word into the sentence; 'obstinate' means stubborn, 'benevolent' means kind, 'candid' means frank.

Idioms carry non-literal meaning: 'to let the cat out of the bag' means to reveal a secret, and 'a bolt from the blue' means a sudden shock.

The Election Commission of India is a constitutional body under Article 324; it conducts Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha, and state legislature elections.

The Governor of a state is appointed by the President and holds office at the President's pleasure, with no fixed tenure.

NITI Aayog replaced the Planning Commission in 2015 and is chaired by the Prime Minister; it issues indices such as the SDG India Index.

The Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in Centre-state disputes under Article 131 and appellate jurisdiction under Article 132-134.

India's census is decennial; the 2011 Census recorded a population of about 1.21 billion and a literacy rate of about 74 percent.

The Tropic of Cancer passes through eight Indian states, including Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and West Bengal.

The Nobel Prize is awarded in Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Literature, Peace, and Economic Sciences; it is not awarded in mathematics.

The headquarters of the World Trade Organization is in Geneva, and the IMF and World Bank are in Washington, D.C.

Area formulas: triangle = 1/2 x base x height; circle = pi r^2; trapezium = 1/2 x (sum of parallel sides) x height; sphere volume = 4/3 pi r^3.

Pythagorean triples such as 3-4-5 and 5-12-13 let you skip calculation; any multiple of a triple is also a triple.

LCM x HCF of two numbers equals their product; the HCF of fractions = HCF of numerators / LCM of denominators.

For a mixture of milk and water, if x litres are removed and replaced by water, the milk after n operations is original x (1 - x/volume)^n.

Compound interest minus simple interest for two years equals P(R/100)^2; for three years it is P(R/100)^2 (3 + R/100).

If a sum doubles in T years at simple interest, the rate is 100/T percent per annum.

Data interpretation: compute required ratios from the table directly and round only at the final step to avoid compounding error.

The average of the first n natural numbers is (n+1)/2, and their sum is n(n+1)/2.

Analogy: identify the relation type (part-whole, cause-effect, worker-tool, synonym) before choosing; the same relation must hold on both sides.

Odd-one-out: check for a shared property such as all being prime, all capitals, or all metals; the exception lacks that property.

Number series with two interleaved sequences alternate positions, so check odd-position and even-position terms separately.

Venn diagram questions about 'only A' require subtracting overlaps; 'A and B but not C' means the region shared by A and B outside C.

For ranking puzzles, total persons = rank from top + rank from bottom - 1; use this to find a missing rank.

Coding by substitution: if letters are replaced by the next-but-one letter, decode the target word by applying the inverse shift.

Statement-conclusion: a conclusion must follow from the given statement alone, not from general knowledge or plausible real-world facts.

Input-output and arrangement puzzles: track a fixed number of steps and verify the rule on the first two steps before applying it.

Cloze tests: read the whole passage first, then choose the option that fits both grammar and meaning; check collocations such as 'make a decision'.

Sentence improvement: prefer the option that is grammatically correct and concise; reject options that change the intended meaning.

Parallelism: items joined by 'and', 'or', 'not only...but also' must share the same grammatical form.

Misplaced modifiers: a participial phrase at the start of a sentence must modify the subject that follows the comma.

'Although' and 'though' take a clause, while 'despite' and 'in spite of' take a noun or gerund.

'Each', 'every', 'either', and 'neither' are singular; 'neither...nor' makes the verb agree with the nearer subject.

Reading comprehension: answer from the passage, treat 'according to the author' literally, and beware of options that are true but not stated.

One-word substitutions: 'altruist' is a selfless person, 'philanthropist' donates to good causes, 'misanthrope' dislikes humankind, 'ephemeral' means short-lived.

The Indian Penal Code was drafted under the Law Commission chaired by Thomas Babington Macaulay and enacted in 1860; the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita replaced it in 2024.

The Right to Information Act was passed in 2005; the Central Information Commission is the apex appellate body for central public authorities.

The National Human Rights Commission is a statutory body created by the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993.

The Comptroller and Auditor General audits government accounts under Article 148 and is called the guardian of the public purse.

The Attorney General of India is appointed under Article 76 and is the chief legal adviser to the Government of India.

The Indian Navy's first indigenous aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, was commissioned in September 2022.

The G20 New Delhi Summit was held in September 2023, and India held the G20 presidency for 2022-23.

The headquarters of Interpol is in Lyon, France, and of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.

Time and distance with relative speed: when moving in the same direction, relative speed is the difference; in opposite directions it is the sum.

To find the speed of a stream from boat speeds, stream speed = (downstream - upstream)/2 and boat speed = (downstream + upstream)/2.

Percentage of a percentage: x percent of y percent of N equals (xy/100) percent of N.

If price rises by r percent, consumption must fall by 100r/(100 + r) percent to keep expenditure unchanged.

The number of ways to arrange n items with repetitions is n!/(p! q! ...), where p and q are counts of identical items.

Probability = favourable outcomes / total outcomes; for independent events, P(A and B) = P(A) x P(B).

Simple average shortcut: if a value is replaced by a larger one, the average rises by the difference divided by the number of values.

For a right circular cylinder, volume = pi r^2 h and curved surface area = 2 pi r h.

Cube and dice: opposite faces of a standard die sum to 7; when a cube is painted and cut, cubes with three painted faces are the 8 corners.

Counting figures: for a grid of m x n squares, the total number of squares is the sum of k^2 terms up to min(m, n).

Syllogism with 'no A is B' converts to 'no B is A', and 'all A are B' converts to 'some B are A'.

Mathematical operations: substitute the given symbols, then apply BODMAS order rather than left-to-right.

Alphabet series: memorise positions in blocks of five (A-E, F-J, K-O, P-T, U-Z) to speed up position questions.

Cause and effect: an effect must follow the cause in time, and a common cause can explain two correlated events.

Data sufficiency: decide only whether the given statements are sufficient, and do not compute the final answer unless needed.

Logical sequence of words: order by time, size, or hierarchy, such as seed, sapling, tree, timber.

'Since' and 'for' with perfect tenses: 'has been working since 2010' uses a point in time, and 'for five years' uses a duration.

Conditional sentences: the first conditional uses present + will, the second uses past + would, and the third uses past perfect + would have.

'Would rather' is followed by the bare infinitive or a past subjunctive, as in 'I would rather you left'.

'No sooner' is followed by 'than', and 'hardly/scarcely' by 'when', with inversion of subject and auxiliary.

'The number of' takes a singular verb, while 'a number of' takes a plural verb.

'Between' is used for two items and 'among' for more than two; 'compare with' shows differences and 'compare to' shows similarity.

Antonym pairs often reverse prefixes: 'credible/incredible', 'legible/illegible', 'relevant/irrelevant'.

Common idioms: 'to burn the midnight oil' means to study late, and 'to beat around the bush' means to avoid the main point.