Typically, these types of questions are about establishing the order in which things occur or working out when a particular event or specification occurs among a series of options.

Usually there are often multiple characteristics for you to consider so to answer these questions successfully, it is imperative that you organise the information that you are given.

These questions test your logic, ability to place events in time, and ability to think about concepts such as more/less, before/after etc… They also require the ability to mentally arrange abstract information, which can be greatly helped by your use of visual diagrams.

In the exam, you can identify these types of questions by looking for terms such as:

Faster, Smaller, Most, Least, First, Last

To help you solve these questions quickly, it is a good idea to organise information if that information is complex. It is recommended that you use tables to do this. See the below example using the boat information above.

You can see that by placing the information in tables if you were give a question that asked what the quickest orange boat was, that you would be able to clearly eliminate those boats that did not meet that criterion. The fact that they are all boats is not going to be important in solving the problem.

Another strategy for this type of question is to draw linear diagrams representing all of the characteristics and where they fall along a timeline or series of options. An example is shown below.

In a nursery there were five plants. Plant One is more expensive than Plants Two and Three, but less expensive than Plant Four. Plant Five is more expensive than Plant Three but less expensive than Plant Two. Which plant is the cheapest?

1. (a)Plant One (b) Plant Two (c) Plant Three (d) Plant Five

You can see clearly from this diagram that Plant Three is the cheapest, so (c) is the correct answer. In using this strategy to complete these types of questions, you need to have processed the information correctly, i.e. read and understood the question. If you make an error in that process, it will show in your workings and likely to eventuate in an incorrect answer.

The video will go through the below three examples:

David is a hairdresser who works on Thursday through to Monday. He has booked Danushka, Katie and Vi on consecutive days with Vi coming on Saturday with Nina. Frank is seen before William who comes two days after Katie. Gausihi is seen two days after Nina and Wes is seen four days after Michael.

Assuming the maximum booking is two people per day and if Wes is coming on Monday, on what day does David only have one client?

A: Monday B: Friday C: Sunday D: Thursday E: Saturday

Five people are comparing how much flour each used in their cake with the same jug. Katie uses more flour than Berenice. Ruby used 2 jugs more than Anu but she used less than Shan Shan. Shan Shan used three jugs more than Anu but 5 jugs less than Berenice.

Whose cake has the most flour?

A: Anu B: Berenice C: Katie D: Ruby E: Shan Shan

There are five cars in a race. The Nissan crosses the finish line before the Proton and the Maserati. The Nissan crosses the line before the Proton whereas the Ferrari crosses the line just after the Proton. The Toyota crosses the finish line before the Nissan.

Which car is the second last to cross the line?

A : ferrari B : maserati C : nissan D : proton E : toyota

Key Rules to remember:

• Know the two polar ends
• Plot everything between the two polar ends based on the information you are provided
• What kinds of polar ends are there? Which ones are common?

Now it's time to do your assignment.

1. Download the assignment question here.
2. Print it out or if you want to do it electronically, save it.
3. Complete the questions to it.
4. Then check the solutions on the video below.
5. If you want the written answers (instead of the video), you can download them here.

---