Reasoning Ability
What is tested
Reasoning Ability in the IBPS RRB Law Officer exam checks whether you can draw valid inferences from structured information under time pressure. Recurring areas are puzzles and seating arrangement, syllogism, blood relations, direction sense, coding-decoding, inequality, order-ranking, input-output and data sufficiency. The paper rewards method, not memory.
Core rules
- In syllogism, use Venn diagrams and test each conclusion for the possibility of being false. "Some A are B" does not convert to "Some B are A" in every formal system, but in the standard treatment used by Indian recruitment exams it does.
- In seating puzzles, fix the orientation first: facing north means your left is the row's left; facing south reverses it.
- In inequality, combine only the same direction: A > B > C gives A > C; A > B < C gives no relation between A and C.
- In blood relations, draw a family tree and mark gender separately; do not infer gender from a name.
Worked example
Statements: All contracts are agreements. Some agreements are void. Conclusions: I. Some contracts are void. II. No contract is void. Reasoning: The contracts circle lies inside agreements. The "some agreements are void" region may or may not overlap contracts. Both conclusions are possible but neither is certain. Answer: neither I nor II follows.
Traps
Treating a possibility as a certainty; ignoring "only a few" or "not all"; reversing a conditional statement; and losing track of left/right when the puzzle changes facing direction.