IBPS Clerk · Bite-size lessons
Order and Ranking
About 6 min · Reasoning Ability · English
Time worked out from the lesson's 405 words at 150 words a minute, plus a minute for each question.
The concept is simple: you're given information about a person's position in a row, queue, or list and asked to find total number of people, someone's position from the other end, or compare positions.
Key ideas
- Position from opposite ends: If you know position from one end, position from other end = Total – Given position + 1.
- Finding total when both positions are given: Total = Position from left + Position from right – 1. The "–1" accounts for counting the person twice.
- When positions change after interchange: Track each person separately. If A and B swap, A takes B's original position and vice versa.
- "Between" vs "From": "5 persons between A and B" means 5 people in the gap (total span = 7 including A and B). "A is 5th from left" means A occupies position 5.
- Left-Right / Top-Bottom convention: Left and Top are position 1 side. Right and Bottom are the "other end" side.
Watch out for
- Forgetting the "–1": Writing Total = Left + Right instead of Left + Right – 1. Fix: Remember you count the person twice, so subtract 1.
- Confusing "from left" with "to the left of": "5th from left" means position 5. "5 to the left of X" means 5 positions before X. Fix: Read prepositions carefully—"from" indicates absolute position; "to the left/right of" indicates relative position.
- Miscounting persons between: If A is 5th and B is 10th, students write "5 between" (just subtracting). Correct: 10 – 5 – 1 = 4 persons between. Fix: Always subtract 1 after taking the difference.
Quick reference
- Total = Left + Right – 1 (single person, both positions given)
- Other end position = Total – Given position + 1
- Persons between = |Position difference| – 1
- After interchange: A goes to B's old spot, B goes to A's old spot
- Minimum total (two people) = Larger of the two positions (if they can overlap)
Check yourself: 3 questions
1. In a row of 45 students, Ravi is 16th from the left end. What is his position from the right end?
2. Mohan ranks 12th from the top and 28th from the bottom in a class. How many students are there in the class?
3. In a queue of children, Arun is 9th from the left and Vijay is 12th from the right. If they interchange their positions, Arun becomes 25th from the left. How many children are there in the queue?
This lesson is cut from the topic's note, not rewritten. Fact-checked on 17 Oct 2026: an AI-assisted check of this note against cited sources; the errors it found were corrected that day. Some errors may remain. The questions are from Shishya's validated question bank.
Read the full noteFlashcards for this topic
Saves this lesson and its 3 questions in this browser on this phone. No sign-in; nothing about you is saved or sent. A saved copy is not updated until you save it again. Parts that load from the server when you use them (the AI tutor, adaptive practice, sign-in) still need a connection.