Data table questions

Numerical reasoning practice > Data table questions

Most candidates lose time on table questions by reading the whole table. You only ever need a few cells. The skill is finding them quickly and trusting the rest is noise.

1. Read the question first, then the table

A table with four rows and four columns has sixteen numbers in it. A typical question needs two or three of them. If you read the table first, you have spent twenty seconds memorising thirteen numbers you will never use.

Work in this order every time:

• Read the question and note which row it names
• Note which columns it needs
• Only then look at the table, and only at that intersection

This sounds obvious. Under a timer, almost nobody does it.

2. Check the units before you calculate

Tables in these tests usually carry a unit note underneath, such as (unit: £000s). It changes the answer by a factor of a thousand and it is easy to miss.

Two habits protect you:

• Read the unit note before the first calculation, not when checking the answer
• If the options are spread across orders of magnitude (6, 60, 600), the question is testing the unit, not the arithmetic

3. Worked example: a total across a row

The table below shows quarterly revenue by department.

Retail 300 / 320 / 350 / 460
Wholesale 340 / 160 / 190 / 170
Online 480 / 200 / 230 / 230
Export 460 / 120 / 370 / 210
(columns are Q1–Q4, unit: £000s)

What is the total annual revenue of the Export department?

How to work it

• The question names one row: Export. The other three rows are noise
• "Annual" means all four quarters, so add across: 460 + 120 + 370 + 210
• Group to make the addition easier: (460 + 210) + (120 + 370) = 670 + 490
• 1,160, and the unit is £000s

Note what you did not do: you never looked at Retail, Wholesale or Online. Twelve of the sixteen numbers were irrelevant.

4. Common traps

Adding a column when the question asked for a row

Departments run down the side, quarters across the top. A question about "the Export department" is a row; a question about "Q3" is a column. Misreading this gives a plausible-looking wrong answer, which is exactly what the distractors are built from.

Answering the sub-total instead of the total

"Total annual" means every period shown. If a table has five columns and one of them is already a total, adding all five double-counts.

Rounding too early

Round at the end, once. Rounding at each step moves the answer enough to land on the wrong option.

5. Getting faster without getting careless

Speed on table questions comes from skipping, not from calculating faster.

• If a question needs a total of four numbers, look for pairs that make round numbers
• If the options are far apart, estimate rather than calculate exactly
• If you cannot see the route within about ten seconds, move on and come back — a table question you understand takes under a minute, and one you do not can eat five