Profit and Loss - A Shortcut

Hello Friends,

Today, let me share with you a shortcut concerned with "Profit and Loss" portion from Quants:-

A shopkeeper sells two of his products at the same price = 120. But, one of these, he sells at a profit of 10% and the other at a loss of 10%. Find the total profit\loss that the shopkeeper made.

The one thing that we need to understand here is that, in such a scenario there will always be a loss.

And the loss percentage, irrespective of the selling and cost price will be given

BY THE FOLLOWING GENERAL FORMULA:-

where "x" is the percentage loss and profit.

Solution :-

In this case, using the formula, we can easily say that the shopkeeper suffers a loss and the loss percentage is (10\10)^2 = 1 %.

Allay

Allay: To calm, pacify or diminish.

His calmness allayed her anxiety.

Goddess Maha-Gauri, the eighth incarnation of Goddess Durga, allays all the fear of her devotees and showers her blessings on them.

Aphorism

Aphorism: A pithy observation that contains a general truth.

Vocab Dose

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Imbecile:

(noun) A stupid person.

(adjective) Stupid, Idiotic.

Try not to make imbecile remarks.

--

Icon:

(noun) A picture of Christ or of Virgin Mary, or of a saint painted in a traditional way on a wooden panel, considered sacred in the eastern orthodox church.

Used Figuratively:-

Today's sports icons.

--

Iconoclast:

Someone who disregards, attacks or ridicules conventional or cherished beliefs.

An iconoclast who made fun of patriotism.

--

Regale:

(Verb) Entertain or amuse (someone) with talk.

I'll regale you with my serious thoughts regarding consulting in another post.

--

Machiavellian (mai - kya- villian)

(Adjective) Cunning, Scheming and Unscruplous especially in politics and in advancing one's career.

Machiavellian management techniques are the tools this firm uses to generate mundane and uninspired results for clients.

--

Behoove:

(verb) It is a duty or responsibility of someone to do something ; It is incumbent on.

Example: It behooves any coach to study his predecessors.

(verb) It is appropriate or suitable; it befits.

Example:

1) It ill behooves the opposition constantly to decry the sale of arms to friendly countries.

2) This puts us at high risk of damaging our lower back in some way, so it certainly behooves us to strengthen our lower back muscles.

--

idée fixe

An idée fixe is a preoccupation of mind held so firmly as to resist any attempt to modify it, a fixation.

An idée fixe that he was of royal blood.

--

Idolatory:

1) (noun) The worship of idols.

2) Excessive or undescerning admiration or reverence; Blind Infatuation.

He adores him to the point of idolatory.

--

Idyl:

(Noun) A short poem or prose piece depicting simple scenes of pastoral, domestic, or country life; also a more

descriptive or narrative poem.

--

Igneous:

(Adjective) Of, containing or having the nature of fire.

whence the name igneous for rocks formed from volcanic magma.

--

Ignoble:

(Adjective) The opposite of Noble.

Dishonorable and contemptible.

--

Ignoramus:

(Noun): An ignorant person.

He is such an ignoramus, he doesn't even know that China is in Asia.

--

Imbroglio:

(Noun)

An extremely confused, complicated, or embarrassing situation.

Example: The Watergate Imbroglio.

--

Imbue:

(verb) : Inspire or permeate with a feeling or quality

To be imbued with the spirit of democracy.

--

Immaculate:

(adj) : Spotless; Completely Clean.

--

Immanent:

(adj) : Remaining within ; inherent.

Immanence refers to philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence, in which the divine is seen to be manifested in or encompassing of the material world.

--

Immigrate

(verb) To come into a country or region of which one is not a native in order to settle there.

--

Imminent:

About to happen.

Antonym: Remote, distant, far-off

Example: Everyone waited anxiously for the imminent storm.

--

Immolate

(verb) : Kill or offer as a sacrifice, esp. by burning

The Vietnamese monk immolated himself.

Importance Of Being in the The Present

Most of our PRECIOUS TIME is WASTED while we are contemplating about our past or deliberating about future event that may or may not take place !!!

The key to a happy and fulfilling life, is to be 100% in the present.

Noun: The Possessive Case ---> Some Exceptions

Hi Friends,

In grammar, the case of a noun or a pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates, its grammatical function in a phrase, clause or a sentence.

For Example,

A pronoun may play the role of subject (I kicked the ball),

of direct object (Rohan kicked me),

or of possessor (This is Ram's cycle.)

Usually, a language is said to "have cases" only if nouns change their form to reflect their case in this way.

For Nouns, we have the following cases:-

Nominative Case:-

When noun is the subject.

Objective\Accusative case:-

When noun is the object.

Eg:-

John kicked the ball.

The noun 'John' is in nominative case.

The noun 'ball' is in objective case.

Possessive Case:-

When the noun is shown to be "possessing\in charge of " something.

Eg:-

This is Ram's Umbrella.

Here the proper Noun 'Ram' is in possessive case and has changed its form by appending apostrophe s.

Formation of Possessive Noun :-

Append with 's. for all cases except when the noun ends with s

Eg:-

The principle visited the Boys' hostel.

Some more, not so peculiar examples:-

1) Karim and Satim's bakery.

2) William and mary's wedding.

3) Raja Rao's and R.k Naraynan's novels.

4) Goldsmith's and Cooper's poems.

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A very important rule:-

The possessive case is used chiefly with names of living things.

1) The Governor's bodyguard.

2) The Lion's mane.

So:-

table's leg--------------------wrong

the leg of the table---------correct

book's cover-----------------wrong

the cover of the book------correct

house's roof----------------wrong.

the roof 0f the house-------correct.

Till next time,

Take Care,

Ashish Mishra

Special Case of 'People'

Hello Friends,

Today, I learnt a new usage of the word 'people'.

People: Generally means a group of persons.

Hence in that case, it's used only in the plural form----

Eg:-

Who are these people ?

But, 'people' also means 'nation'.

Hence when used in this sense, it can be appended with a 's' to form the plural of nation.

Eg:-

There are many different peoples in Europe.

Till Next Time,

Take Care.

Ashish Mishra

Noun Plurals Explained

Certain traits of the English language have always managed to baffle the non-native speakers.

The plural forms of certain nouns certainly lead the pack here.

The most usual way of converting a noun from its singular form to its plural is by appending the former with 's', but there are plenty of other ways as well.

Before we set out to explore this territory, it must be kept in mind that, English or for that matter any language can be learnt thoroughly only through repeated exposure and usage. Hence we must aim to use the plurals in their correct form, in general speaking as well.

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s:

Mountain: Mountains

River: Rivers

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es: Nouns ending with o, ch, sh, ss, x

Tomato: Tomatoes

Brush: Brushes

Kiss: Kisses

But words with foreign origin, ending with 'O', add 's' only

Dynamo: Dynamos and not dynamoes

Kimono: Kimonos

Piano: Pianos

Kimono: Kimonoes

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ies: Nouns ending in 'y', following a consonant sound,

form their plural by dropping the 'y' and 'ies'.

baby: babies

fly: flies

country: countries

Nouns ending in 'y', following a vowel sound,

form their plural by adding 's'.

boy: boys

donkey: donkeys

guy: guys.

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ves:-

Calf: calves

Half: halves

Self: selves

life: lives

knife: knives

wolf: wolves

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A few nouns form their plural by a vowel change:-

foot: feet

mouse: mice

goose: geese

louse: lice

man: men

tooth: teeth

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Some nouns don't change when pluralised:-

Aircraft: Aircraft

Deer: Deer

Fish: Fish

Counsel: Counsel

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Some nouns are used only in their plural form:-

Where are my trousers\scissors\shoes\glasses\pants\compasses ?

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Certain collective nouns, though singular in form, are always used in plural:-

Poultry: (Domestic fowls, such as chicken)

These poultry are mine.

Cattle:-

Who are these cattle ?

Vermin (animals considered dangerous for crops)

Vermin destroy our property and carry diseases.

Gentry:

There are a few gentry in this town.

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More to follow,

Till Next time,

Good Bye and Take Care,

Ashish Mishra

Allusion \ Alluded to

Allude (Verb):-

make a more or less disguised reference to; "He alluded to the problem but did not mention it"

Allusion (Noun):-

An expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference.

The candidate alluded to the recent war by saying, "We've all made sacrifices."

Altercation

Disturbing news from CityNoise, where a motorist and a bike courier got into a heated exchange and physical altercation in the Market.

Altercation (Noun)

A noisy argument or disagreement, esp. in public

Reclusive

The Reclusive Literary Genius who penned Catcher in the Rye in the year 1951.

J.D. Salinger's entire literary output consists of one novel and 13 short stories, all written before 1959. Twenty-nine years have passed since his last interview — 44 since his last published story.

Salinger began to withdraw from public life following the 1951 publication of The Catcher in the Rye, which holds the dual distinction of having been both a banned book and required reading in U.S. schools.

Today, a new Salinger publication or interview would spark a literary firestorm. Not that such an event is likely to happen; to the creator of Holden Caulfield, we are all a bunch of phonies.

Taken From Time Magazine

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1902376_1902378_1902428,00.html

Thus he may well be called a recluse.

Hope, you added one more word to your vocab,

Till Next time,

Good Bye and Take Care,

Ashish Mishra

A typical Wine and Water Problem

4 litres of wine are drawn from a cask containing, 40 litres of wine. It is replaced by water. The process is repeated 3 times.

a) What is the final quantity of wine left in the cask ?

b) What is the ratio of wine to water finally ?

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Solution:-

The thought process behind the solution goes something like this:-

To make things simple, Lets just talk about the wine ;)

1) 40 litre wine, 4 litre taken out ---> 36 litre remaining + 4 litre water added

Note we took 10% out. Wine to water ratio = 36:4 = 9:1

2) 40 litre mixture (36 litre wine 4 litre water), 4 litre taken out----> Going by the ratio of wine to water, Amount of wine taken out = 3.6 litre.

Note, here also wine taken out = 10% of existing value.

We can say that with every iteration of the process the amount of wine left in the mixture is 90% of the previous value...

Therefore, the amount of wine left in the mixture after 3 iterations:-

40 * (90/100) (90/100) (90/100)

Final quantity of wine left = 40 * (0.9)^3 = x

Final Ratio of wine to water = x: (40-x)

This question, if attempted through the common methods of arithmetic, will be a source of supreme headache. Digesting the above approach, makes our life much simpler :)

Also, here is a standard solution for a standard problem:-

Hope the article helped,

Till next time,

Take care and bye,

Ashish

PS: Also Visit http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/aSGuest19101-192079-mixtures-alligations-cat-mba-quantitative-aptitude-quant-education-ppt-powerpoint/

for a good small presentation on Alligations and Mixtures.

A Range of Problems From Alligations

Hello Friends,

Today, I want to share some basics of Alligations with you.

It forms one of the topics of study in almost every Quantitative Aptitude Textbook.

Lets begin with a brief know-how : -

Alligation is an old and practical method of solving arithmetic problems related to mixtures of ingredients. There are two types of alligation: alligation medial, used to find the quantity of a mixture given the quantities of its ingredients, and alligation alternate, used to find the amount of each ingredient needed to make a mixture of a given quantity. Alligation medial is merely a matter of finding a weighted mean. Alligation alternate is more complicated and involves organizing the ingredients into high and low pairs which are then traded off.

So, if we have n1 items of average weight w1 and n2 items of average weight w2.

Then, if we mix the items then the combined average weight is given by the formula:-

Aw = (n1 * w1 + n2 * w2)

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(n1 + n2)

Just twisting the formula a bit, we can also arrive at a very helpful corrolary,

n1/n2 = (Aw - w2) / (w1 - Aw)

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Quantitative Aptitude books are filled with relevant questions based on the above theory and the reader can refer the same.

What I am interested at this point is to share some seemingly difficult questions, which become very easy, when we view them from the point of view of Alligations:-

1) Pradeep mixes two mixtures of milk and water. He mixes 40 litres of the first containing 20% water and 60 litres of second containing 30% water. Find the percentage of water in the final mixture.

2) A trader earns a profit of 20% on 40% of his goods sold, while he earns a profit of 30% on 60% of his goods sold. Find his percentage profit on the whole.

3) 40% of the revenues of a school comes from the junior classes while 60% of the revenues of the school came from senior classes.

If the school raises its fees by 20% for the junior classes and 30% for the senior classes, find the percentage increase in the revenues of the school.

Making oneself comfortable with applications of alligations, we can save hell lot of time and energy while we tackle questions in the time-intensive aptitude tests.

Hope the post helps,

Till next time,

Good Bye and Take Care,

Ashish