Caselet and Mixed Data Interpretation

Caselet DI hides the data inside a paragraph of text instead of a chart, and mixed DI combines two formats such as a table beside a pie chart. These are the toughest DI types in SBI Clerk, but they are beatable with one discipline: convert the words or the mixed data into your own small table before you touch a single question.

Turn the Paragraph Into a Table

A caselet buries numbers and relationships in sentences, so your first move is to extract them into a tidy table of your own. Read the paragraph once, jot each figure and each stated relationship, and you have effectively converted a hard caselet into an easy table set. Almost all of the difficulty in caselet DI is the extraction; the arithmetic afterwards is ordinary.

Handling Stated Relationships

Caselets often give relationships rather than direct numbers — 'the number of women was 20 percent more than the number of men'. Translate each such sentence into an equation or a filled cell as you read. When a caselet gives one actual value and several relationships, use the actual value to unlock the rest, working outward from the one number you know for certain.

Extract: each figure → a cell; each relationship → an equation, anchored to one known value

Mixed DI: Keep the Sources Straight

In a mixed set, be clear about which chart each figure comes from, because questions often ask you to combine them — a percentage from the pie applied to a total from the table. Label your rough work with the source so you never pull a number from the wrong chart. The maths is routine; the discipline of tracking sources is what protects your accuracy.

Solved Example

Example: A caselet says a class has 40 students and girls are 60 percent of them. Girls = 0.6 × 40 = 24, so boys = 16. With those two cells filled, any ratio or percentage question about the class is now a one-line answer.

✗ Answering caselet questions straight from the paragraph  |  ✓ Extracting the numbers into a small table first

Deciding When to Skip a Hard Set

Not every caselet or mixed set is worth your time, and the skill of walking away is as valuable as the skill of solving. Give yourself a firm rule: if you cannot extract a clean table within about a minute, or if the relationships form a tangle you cannot anchor to a known value, mark the set for later and move to guaranteed marks. In a sectional-timed paper the cost of a stubborn set is not just the minutes lost but the easy questions elsewhere that go unattempted while the clock runs. Return to a skipped set only after the rest of the section is secure, and even then only if time genuinely remains. This discipline protects your whole Numerical score far more than heroically cracking one difficult caselet ever could.