GAMSAT Section III – Flow Chart Analysis

GAMSAT Section III concentrates on testing the logical ability of an aspirant. ACER designs questions for Section III in such a way that students cannot get away with mere rote learning. You need to have a great conceptual understanding of the Basic Sciences. GAMSAT questions are generally intended to make the candidate co-relate various parameters and features from the given passage and then work on them to come to the correct conclusion. This is the basic technique while handling multiple choice questions (MCQs) for passage based questions in GAMSAT. This is the reason why ACER is often incorporating flow-charts of various types in GAMSAT Section III questions. Let us try to understand the real motive behind this inclusion.

Flow-charts are schematic representations of some particular process or phenomenon, expressed step-wise. The motive behind a flow-chart creation is to simplify the whole process or phenomenon. Yet, there is enough scope to use logical understanding and collate various attributes or parameters. It concentrates on visually presenting a data flow through an information processing system, the operations performed within the system and the sequence of action. The key components of a typical flow-chart are – arrows, boxes, circles.  To understand the details of how a flowchart works, let us study an example –

The above flow-chart shows the operating details of an alarm clock. Uni-directional arrows show the flow of events in that particular direction or step-wise arrangements from beginning to end. A brief description of the events is given inside the boxes or the circles. To understand a flow chart, we must start at the beginning, that is, ‘Start’. When an alarm rings, it implies that we wake up from sleep on hearing it ring and climb out of bed, which is the end of the process. But, there is another alternative pattern shown here. Sometimes, even after hearing the alarm, if we don’t feel like getting up, we hit the snooze button. This immediately stops the alarm and delays it for 5 mins. Therefore, after 5 mins the alarm will ring again, repeating the cycle. From this flow-chart, it can also be noted that an individual will hit the snooze button on an average of 3 times before finally getting up. From this we can also conclude that an individual may not always be ready to get up from bed after hearing the first alarm. In other words, he/ she may need a buffer time to adjust from her sleeping condition and be mentally ready to wake up.

So, we have now understood how to collate various factors and come to a correct conclusion when analysing a flow-chart. It is evident that no concepts or previously learnt facts play any kind of role in the analysis of Flow-charts. Only logic and correct reasoning come to play. Keeping this attribute in mind, ACER has included Flow charts in the Section III of the GAMSAT test. Aspirants should practice answering Flow-chart related questions, as much as possible, for the GAMSAT test. Remember, practice makes things perfect.