Current Affairs and Reasoning
This domain pairs static reasoning ability with recent events. Reasoning is scored purely on method, so practise the standard question types; current affairs questions usually come from the twelve months before the exam notification, so fix your cut-off date and revise from one reliable monthly source.
Current affairs that get asked
- State schemes: Jan Aadhaar, Chiranjeevi Swasthya Bima Yojana, Palanhar Yojana, Mukhyamantri Kisan Samman Nidhi, rural employment guarantee schemes.
- Environment and wildlife: new Ramsar sites, Conference of Parties meetings, the four-yearly All India Tiger Estimation, and the cheetah reintroduction at Kuno.
- Awards, sports champions, appointments to constitutional and statutory posts, and major budget announcements.
Reasoning types
- Number series: test differences, ratios, squares and cubes before guessing.
- Coding-decoding, blood relations, direction sense, syllogism, ranking and order, calendars and clocks.
Worked example
Series: 2, 6, 12, 20, 30, ? Reasoning: the first differences are 4, 6, 8, 10, which increase by 2 each step. The next difference must be 12, so the missing term is 30 + 12 = 42. Note that the terms are also n(n+1) for n = 1 to 5, which confirms the answer independently. A common wrong approach is to double the previous term, which fails at 12 to 20.
Traps that cost marks
- Assuming a pattern from only two terms; always verify on at least three.
- In direction sense, answering total distance travelled when net displacement is asked, or forgetting left-right reversal after turning to face south.
- In blood relations, forgetting to convert "brother of my mother" into maternal uncle before evaluating the relationship.
- In current affairs, revising beyond the cut-off date and choosing an older fact.
- In syllogism, carrying real-world assumptions into "some" and "no" statements.