Reasoning ability is defined as a person’s ability to select anything in their daily lives like what to prioritise first and whatnot with a proper reason. Reasoning ability is used in every sphere of life. An Individual’s background, experience, emotions, knowledge, etc plays a vital role in reasoning ability. For solving technical solutions numerical and logical reasoning are required and for the problems that are dealing with designs, spatial reasoning is required. There are various reasoning ability topics.

There are different types of reasoning ability –

• Abductive Reasoning – Abductive reasoning is a type of reasoning in which at first the person observes the situation and based on that observation the problem is detected and the solution is performed accordingly. For example, the manager of an XYZ company observes that his workers are taking a long gap in between the office hours. By analyzing the situation he found that the food provided in his canteen is not anymore good as before, so the workers are going outside to have their lunch. The manager did not notice it before because he carries his lunchbox from home to the office every day. After finding the cause he talked to the admin and asked the cook to serve good quality food as before and he started taking lunch from office canteen the next day so that he does not overlook the situation as he did before.
• Inductive Reasoning – For coming to a conclusion and identifying patterns inductive reasoning is applied. In a test of reasoning ability, candidates are provided with letters or numbers, a series of diagrams and are asked to detect the pattern for finding answers.
• Critical Thinking – Observing different aspects of the situation and the effect occurring and then approaching a solution is known as critical thinking. Decision-making and problem-solving are somewhat very close to critical thinking. For example, a financial planner fixes the budget for the coming financial year by using critical thinking skills while evaluating the budget for this year.
• Logical reasoning – For concluding by using logical reasoning, steps or rules which are already set are used here. For finding solutions of Blood relation, coding-decoding, order and ranking, puzzles, etc. logical reasoning is used. Logical reasoning is also applied in the time of analysing data, researching, strategizing, planning, taking interviews of a candidate, improving a process flow, and other activities in the workplace.

The reasoning ability topics include –

• Arithmetical Reasoning
• Data Sufficiency
• Number-Ranking-Time Sequence
• Verbal Reasoning
• Alphabet Test
• Blood Relations
• Puzzle Test
• Analogy
• Cubes and Dices Test
• Images
• Series Completion
• Syllogism
• Classification
• Non-Verbal Series
• Mathematical Operations 
• Statements

Reasoning ability questions are defined as follows –

The questions which are asked in competitive exams like railway fall under the category of non-verbal reasoning, verbal reasoning, analytical or logical reasoning. The questions which come under the non-verbal sections are the diagrams and pictures-related questions, the categorising reasoning ability questions are a bit tough. Under both analytical and verbal portions, the questions related to seating arrangements, blood relation, etc. fall. 

Reasoning ability questions that fall under logical reasoning and analytical reasoning are given in the following table –

Reasoning ability questions that fall under non-verbal and verbal reasoning are given in the following table –

Conclusion

It is to conclude that for solving technical solutions numerical and logical reasoning are required and for the problems that are dealing with designs spatial reasoning is required. There are various reasoning ability topics. There are different types of reasoning abilities; these are Abductive Reasoning, Inductive Reasoning, Critical Thinking, and logical reasoning.