Statement and Conclusions

Introduction:

The Statement and conclusions topic in the logical reasoning section of the Government exams is designed to test your ability to analyse, understand and reason. This can be done by interpreting claims, making inferences and analysing arguments. The topic is about a situation that might happen and four conclusions. If the situation happened, then the conclusion would be true, but if the situation didn’t happen, then the conclusion would be false.

What is Statement and Conclusion Reasoning?

Stating a claim requires writing exactly what you believe to be true. The statement is the claim and supporting it may involve arguments. For example, one may state that a team has scored two goals in match X and write the statement that they have scored two goals in match X. This might be true but we can’t call it a claim unless we support it with reasons (Arguments) to prove its truth.

How Difficult is Statement and Conclusion Reasoning?

The Statement and conclusion question can be really hard because it has a lot of rules and regulations. Here is what a good statement would look like: The team has scored two goals in match X. This is not very clear, but an argument could be used to prove that it is true by declaring that the score in match X is 2:1 for the team playing. Statements and conclusions are generally more difficult than the other reasoning topics in government exams. The reason that most students find this topic difficult is that it’s easy to miss a few questions by just reading the question. To solve this issue, it is advised to have a clear idea about how to solve each type of question from this topic. Once aspirants familiarise themselves with the pattern and types of questions asked, it becomes quite easy to answer them quickly.

Some Examples of Statement and Conclusion Reasoning:

A television set has been functioning for the past 6 hours.

It would be safe to assume that the television set is working fine.

This statement is false because it mentions in the conclusion that it is ‘safe’ to assume that the television set is working fine, whereas we cannot call anything as fact without supporting it with reasons. So this statement cannot be true with this claim.

If a student had sorted all his books while he was coming to class, he would have completed his homework much before the end of the class.

This claim implies that if a student has done any one thing while coming to school, then he will likely complete his homework before the end of class.

Tips and Tricks to solve Statement and Conclusion Questions:

In order to solve statement and conclusions questions, aspirants must check some important points:

1) Never miss a single option from the given options.

2) Don’t attempt to solve the questions randomly. Go through the options and analyse thoroughly before choosing the correct answer.

3) Always try to solve all questions, once you attempt a question, move on to the next one and skip those which are difficult. In order to get all options right and completely eliminate chances of having 1-2 wrong answers, it is always better to give all options some importance in solving each question (i.e. don’t just skip a single option for each question)

4) Understand the clues and arguments before spending time solving the questions.

5) Never leave a question unanswered, if you are unsure of how to answer a question, try to eliminate two options and then leave it.

6) If you don’t understand how to solve something by just looking at it, try to check other questions on the topic with similar structure (especially the solutions). Understanding other questions help you get a clearer picture of how to solve that particular problem.

7) Associate with your concept and topic knowledge while attempting such questions. This would help improve your speed and accuracy while answering similar questions in future.

8) If a question looks hard, re-read it and make sure that you understood the question properly. If you think that there is something important that you haven’t understood, try to re-read the same question again, ideally after some time.

9) Break down the statement into parts and analyse each of them. Don’t try to solve all parts at once or in a single go. If you can solve only one part by yourself, then do so and move on to another part afterwards.

10) Always read the answer choices while solving a Statement and Conclusions type of questions; this would help in comparing what is given with your answer choices and find out where they are wrong as well as right by using these hints.

Conclusion:

The above-mentioned tips would be really beneficial while solving statement and conclusion questions. However, it is always better to practice more and more questions from different sources before giving the exams. I hope that now aspirants will be able to understand how to solve Statement and Conclusion Questions in logical reasoning in a better manner.