Modern Maths — CAT Quantitative Ability
Modern Maths is CAT's smallest individual QA topic by weight, but it is also the most template-driven: permutations and combinations, probability, special-series sums and polygon-diagonal counting each reduce to a small, fixed set of recognisable sub-types. The difficulty is almost always in correctly identifying which sub-type a question belongs to, not in the computation once it is identified.
1. Permutations and combinations
The fundamental principle of counting underlies every formula in this section: if one stage of a task can be done in ways and a second, independent stage in ways, the whole task can be done in ways. Every permutation and combination formula is this principle applied to a specific structure, not a separate rule to memorise in isolation.
Two identities make combinations faster to compute and to sanity-check. — choosing items to include is equivalent to choosing items to exclude, so is more easily computed as than by expanding directly. Pascal's identity, , is the recursive rule behind Pascal's triangle and occasionally shortcuts a sum of several combination terms.
The single question that decides between the two is whether rearranging the same selected items counts as a different outcome. Choosing a 3-person committee from 10 people is a combination (the committee is the same regardless of the order named); arranging 3 of 10 books on a shelf is a permutation (a different order is a genuinely different arrangement).
Arrangements with repeated items divide out the repetitions: the number of distinct arrangements of a word with letters, where one letter repeats times, another times, and so on, is . For the word MISSISSIPPI (11 letters: M once, I four times, S four times, P twice): distinct arrangements — treating every repeated letter as distinguishable would wildly overcount.
Circular arrangements of distinct people around a round table number , not — fixing one person's seat removes the rotational symmetry that would otherwise count the same circular arrangement times (once for each rotation). If the arrangement's mirror image (clockwise vs anticlockwise) is also considered identical, as with a necklace of beads, the count is further halved to .
Selecting items with repetition allowed (choosing items from types, unlimited supply of each, order irrelevant) uses the stars-and-bars formula:
Distributing 10 identical candies among 3 children (some may get zero) is ways — a distinct formula from ordinary combinations, since here the "items" being chosen are unlimited-supply types, not distinct objects.
"At least one" counting questions are answered fastest through the complement, exactly as in Arithmetic's percentage chapter: count the arrangements or selections with NONE of the restricted property, and subtract from the total. "How many 3-person committees from 5 men and 4 women include at least one woman?" is faster as (total minus all-men) than by separately counting committees with exactly 1, 2 or 3 women and adding them.
Dividing distinct items into groups of specified sizes uses a direct extension of the arrangement-with-repetition idea: splitting 9 distinct people into groups of 4, 3 and 2 is when the groups themselves are distinguishable (e.g. named teams), but must be divided further by if of the groups are of equal size and interchangeable (unnamed).
A derangement is a permutation in which no item ends up in its original position — the classic framing is letters placed into addressed envelopes with none in its correct envelope. The count is given by:
For : . A useful approximation for larger is , which converges quickly — even at it already gives , close to the exact value of 9.
2. Probability
Two dice, cards, and coins are the three recurring probability settings, and each has its own "total outcomes" trap. Two dice have 36 equally likely ordered outcomes, not 21 unordered sums — treating and as one outcome undercounts. A standard deck has 52 cards, and drawing without replacement changes the total for each subsequent draw, so the second card's probability is conditioned on what the first draw removed.
Conditional and sequential probability under without-replacement drawing is computed by multiplying stage-by-stage probabilities, each on the reduced remaining set — this is the same multiplication rule used for dependent events in Arithmetic's time-work chapter, applied here to a shrinking sample instead of a shrinking tank. For coins, the number of ways to get exactly heads in tosses is out of total equally likely sequences — a direct application of combinations to a probability setting.
The addition rule, , and the complement rule, , both transfer directly from Algebra's set-theory instincts into probability. A question asking for the probability of drawing at least one ace in two draws (without replacement) is fastest via the complement: , rather than separately summing the probabilities of exactly one ace and exactly two aces.
Two events are independent when the occurrence of one does not change the probability of the other — a fresh coin toss after a head is still a fresh 50-50 toss, unaffected by the previous result. This is the one place where "the coin is due for a tail" reasoning (the gambler's fallacy) is worth naming explicitly as a trap: independent trials genuinely have no memory of what came before.
3. Special series sums
The sum of the first odd numbers is exactly , a fact worth remembering directly rather than deriving from the general AP sum formula every time — (the first 10 odd numbers) is with no term-by-term addition needed. The sum of the first even numbers is , exactly one AP-sum step away from the odd-number identity.
The sum-of-cubes identity has a striking structural feature worth noticing: it is literally the square of the sum-of-integers formula, — a fact that occasionally shortcuts a question asking to compare or relate the two sums directly, without computing either sum numerically first.
A fraction series whose terms telescope collapses almost entirely on subtraction, and recognising this structure turns an apparently long sum into a two-term computation. Writing each term as the difference :
every interior term cancels against its neighbour, leaving only the first and last. Spotting that a series is telescoping — each term is a difference of consecutive values of some simpler expression — is far faster than attempting to sum the terms directly.
4. Polygon diagonal counting
The number of diagonals in a convex polygon with vertices is the total number of line segments between any two vertices, minus the sides that are not diagonals:
For a decagon (): diagonals. This is a direct application of combinations — choosing 2 vertices from gives every possible connecting segment, and subtracting the sides (which connect only adjacent vertices, not diagonally) leaves exactly the diagonals.
The same "choose 2 (or 3) vertices" idea answers two related counting questions that are easy to confuse with the diagonal count. The number of straight lines determined by points, no three of which are collinear, is simply — every pair of points determines one line, and this count includes the polygon's own sides, unlike the diagonal count, which explicitly excludes them.
The number of triangles formed by choosing any 3 of the vertices of a convex polygon is , since any 3 non-collinear points determine exactly one triangle regardless of whether the connecting segments are sides or diagonals of the polygon.
Worked Examples
Example 1 (permutations vs combinations — easy). In how many ways can a committee of 3 be chosen from 8 people, and in how many ways can 3 of those 8 be arranged in a line for a photo?
Committee (order irrelevant): . Photo arrangement (order relevant): — exactly times larger, since each committee of 3 can be arranged in distinct orders.
Example 2 (arrangements with repetition — medium). Find the number of distinct arrangements of the letters of the word "BANANA."
BANANA has 6 letters: B once, A three times, N twice. Distinct arrangements .
Example 3 (circular arrangement — medium). In how many ways can 6 people be seated around a round table?
ways, since fixing one person's seat removes the rotational duplicates.
Example 4 (stars and bars — hard). In how many ways can 10 identical candies be distributed among 3 children, with no restriction on how many each child receives (including zero)?
ways.
Example 5 (probability, dice — easy). Two fair dice are rolled. Find the probability that the sum is 8.
Favourable outcomes (out of 36 ordered pairs): — 5 outcomes. Probability .
Example 6 (probability, cards without replacement — hard). Two cards are drawn without replacement from a standard 52-card deck. Find the probability that both are aces.
— equivalently , confirming the sequential and the combination approaches agree.
Example 7 (probability, coins — easy). Three fair coins are tossed. Find the probability of getting exactly 2 heads.
.
Example 8 (special series — easy). Find the sum of the first 10 odd natural numbers, and the sum of the squares of the first 10 natural numbers.
Sum of first 10 odd numbers . Sum of squares .
Example 9 (polygon diagonals — medium). How many diagonals does a convex decagon (10 sides) have?
diagonals.
Example 10 (at-least-one, complement counting — hard). From 5 men and 4 women, a committee of 3 is to be formed. In how many ways can the committee include at least one woman?
Total committees of 3 from 9 people: . Committees with no woman (all men): . At least one woman: .
Example 11 (polygon, triangles from vertices — medium). How many triangles can be formed by joining any 3 vertices of a convex octagon (8 vertices), and how does this compare with its diagonal count?
Triangles: , since any 3 non-collinear vertices determine exactly one triangle. Diagonals: . The two counts measure genuinely different things — one counts unordered vertex triples, the other counts non-adjacent vertex pairs — and it is a coincidence-free comparison, not a derivable relationship between the two.
Example 12 (special series, telescoping — hard). Find .
Writing each term as and summing, every interior term cancels: .
Summary
Modern Maths is template-driven — the real skill is identifying which of a small number of recurring sub-types a question belongs to, since the computation itself is then routine.
Permutations count arrangements where order matters; combinations count selections where it does not. Repeated-item arrangements divide by the factorial of each repetition count; circular arrangements use , not ; and selecting with unlimited repetition uses the stars-and-bars formula .
Dice, cards and coins are the three recurring probability settings — two dice give 36 ordered outcomes, card draws without replacement shrink the total at each stage, and coin-toss counts use combinations directly.
The sum of the first odd numbers is ; the sum of cubes is the square of the sum of integers. Polygon diagonals are , a direct combinations application once the sides are excluded from the vertex-pair count.
