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Data interpretation is the best-value block in any quantitative paper, and most candidates treat it as the worst. They see a table of twenty numbers and assume it will take five minutes, so they leave it for the end and never return to it.
The arithmetic here is easier than in the rest of the section. There is no algebra, no geometry, no formula to recall. What there is instead is one reading of a table that then answers four or five separate questions — nowhere else in the paper does a single act of comprehension pay four times.
The fear comes from the presentation, not the mathematics. The same numbers can arrive as a table, a bar graph, a pie chart or a line graph, and each looks like a different subject. They are not. Once the numbers are on the page in front of you, every one of those four is read the same way.
What follows is the reading method, the three calculations that cover nearly every question, and the traps that are set inside them.
1. In a pie chart, a sector of 72° represents what percentage of the total?
2. The number of students in a school rose from 400 to 500. The percentage increase is:
3. A quantity falls from 600 to 540. The percentage decrease is:
4. A pie chart shows a total expenditure of ₹7,200. One sector measures 45°. The amount it represents is:
5. A value is first increased by 20% and then decreased by 20%. The net change is:
6. In 2023 School A had 500 students and School B had 540. The ratio of A to B is:
7. Expressed as a percentage, the fraction 1/8 is:
8. Which presentation is best suited for showing how a single quantity changes continuously over a period of time?