Page 219 - Services Selection Board (SSB) Interviews

Chapter
Chapter
16 Syllogism

Section Level No. of Questions

Concept applicator Basic 15
Concept builder Level -1 14
Concept cracker Level -2 19
Concept deviator Level -3 29

INTRODUCTION
Syllogism is one of the very important chapter for any aptitude exam. In these type of questions premise has generally
two statement on the basis of which a deduction has to be made for conclusion. And then that conclusion we have to
select from the given options
We may have a case where from the given premise, no conclusion can be drawn
There are two methods to solve these type of questions:
(i) Venn Diagram
(ii) Rules of deduction
Now we will see how to derive conclusion from the given premise from these two methods but before that lets have a
look at the different components of the premise and for that take two example of premise.
All Rats are Hats ...(i)
All Hats are Pats ...(ii)
(i) The premises normally start with qualifiers or quantifiers e.g the word All, No, some and Some – Not. The word
“All” has its synonyms as – Every, Any, Each, whereas the word “Some” can also be replaced by Many, Few, A
little, Most of, Much of, More, etc.
(ii) A premise consists of a subject and a predicate wherein the first term [e.g. “Rats” in statement (i)] is the subject and
the second term [e.g. “Hats” in statement (i)] the predicate. Similarly, in statement (ii), ‘Hats” is called the subject
and “Pats” is the predicate.
(iii) The word that occurs in both the premises is known as the ‘middle term’ (in this example since “Hats” is in both
the premise hence it is called middle term).
(iv) The “conclusion” of the premise middle term should not appear and conclusion should consist of the other two
words (“Rats” and “Pats” in the above example) and the.
The premises can be divided into 2 types (Based on qualifier)
(A) Universal statements [if the qualifier used in the premise is “All”, “Every”, “Any”, “Each”]
(B) Particular statements [if the qualifier used in the premise is “Some”, Many, Few, A little, Most of, Much of,
More, etc]
The premises can be divided into 2 types (Based on type of statement):
Positive (affirmative) statements [if premise has no negation]
Negative statements [If premise has a negative term like “not” or “no”]