DATA INTERPRETATION : The types and their characteristics - Samrat Roy
mbatious last edited by admin
Samrat Roy, Regional Manager, ENDEAVOR Careers Pvt. Ltd., is based out of Kolkata. He has trained over 15000 students for various competitive examinations like CAT, GMAT, GRE in the last 13 years. His area of interest is Quantitative Aptitude(QA), Data Interpretation(DI) and Logical Reasoning(LR).
One of the major areas in CAT and almost all the other Management entrance tests is Data Interpretation(DI). As the name suggests, a given set of Data followed by some questions are to be comprehended, analyzed and answered by a candidate. Many people are of the opinion that DI is the only area which extends its utility beyond the B-School campus and far into the corporate career of a person.
Over the years, in different examinations, we have seen DI getting clubbed with Math though sometimes it is placed as a separate section. Some tests prefer calculation based DI sets, while some prefer Logic based DI sets or, to create a twist, a combination of the methods.
Types of DI sets:
The basic types of DI sets are as follows(1) Tables: Tables are the most common types as most of the information can easily be represented in this form. In our daily life we come across various information in tabular form e.g. scorecard, grocers bill, restaurant bill etc. It has been seen that most CAT takers comprehend tables very easily and tables are more calculation driven DI sets. The typical calculation would include finding average, ranking them, finding the percentage change etc.
(2) Bar Diagrams: The second type of Data representation is “bar diagrams” where bars of different sizes and colour are used. Here, the questions are a mix of calculation as well as comparison of data. Ex – Bar chart representing the runs scored in every over of a cricket match. The advantage of a bar diagram is that each bar is distinct from the other and can be easily identified. Bar diagrams are of two types, normal and stacked bars.