Alligation — A Societal Evil
A deeper look into our flawed education system
Look at the irony of our education system today!
Alligation and mixing of products has become so common that it is included in our curriculum! We are being taught alligation as if it is some precious knowledge to be treasured upon.
But beware of this societal evil!
All the major “aptitude” tests and entrance examinations such as CAT, MAT, CMAT, XAT, etc. include a question on alligation in their tests.
As this blog is a part of Key Takeaways of our test series ‘Race to the WITCH Mountain’, I am reluctantly explaining the ‘education part’ of alligation (I call alligation as corruption!). The Quantitative section in an aptitude test is arguably the most important section and also, the most scoring.
In Accenture Part Test #2, we had given a question on alligation and mixture. We observed that students had difficulty in solving these type of problems.
Alligation is a faster technique of solving problems based on the weighted average situations applied to the case of two groups being mixed.
Alternately, you can use the techniques you learn here for solving weighted average problems which will help you save valuable time wherever a direct question based on the mixing of two groups is asked.
Weighted average is used when a number of smaller groups are mixed together to form one large group.
Weighted Average = Sum total of all groups / Total number of elements in all groups together.
The Alligation Situation: Suppose two groups of elements are mixed together to form a third group containing the elements of both the groups. If the average of first group is ‘a’ and the number of elements is ‘x’; the average of second group is ‘b’ and the number of elements is ‘y’, then to find the average ‘c’ of the new group formed, we can either use the weighted average equation or the alligation equation.
Alligation Equation: x/y = (b-c)/(c-a)
Graphical Representation: The above formula can be represented by the following cross diagram. The cross method is pretty effective in the situation where all the three averages are known and ratio is to be found out.
Straight Line Approach: Cross method becomes quite cumbersome when one of the averages (a, b or c) are unknown. Thus, we tweak the cross method a bit so that the question can be solved graphically in all cases.
Visualize the following diagram as a fragment of the number line with the positions a, b and c in that order from left to right.
Then,
- y is responsible for the distance between a and c or y corresponds to c-a.
- x is responsible for the distance between c and b or x corresponds to b-c.
- (x+y) is responsible for the distance between a and b or (x+y) corresponds to b-a.
Example question from the last test on Pariksha.Co :
Do you see how alligation is being ingrained deep in our minds?
Mixing is nothing but adulteration which is rampant in our society today. Our education system is teaching us to cheat the customers to maximize benefits (Really? Are you kidding me?? Who can be so short-sighted to run behind temporary benefits??).
It has been ages since I have had pure milk to drink. I don’t even know whether the petrol I use for my bike is pure petrol or petrol adulterated with kerosene.
Remember that such alligation or mixing is nothing but detrimental to the society. How can we expect a moral and truthful society if topics such as alligation are being taught and ingrained in our minds?
Click here to find more about our key takeaways which will help you solve aptitude questions in no time!
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