RRB Group D · Bite-size lessons
Profit and Loss
About 6 min · Mathematics · English
Time worked out from the lesson's 369 words at 150 words a minute, plus a minute for each question.
The concept revolves around buying and selling goods, calculating gains or losses, and understanding pricing strategies involving discounts and marked prices. Mastery of this topic is essential because it forms the foundation for more complex commercial mathematics and directly impacts your ability to solve real-world transaction problems under time pressure.
Key ideas
- Cost Price (CP) is the price at which an article is purchased or the total expense incurred to acquire/produce it. All profit or loss calculations reference this base value.
- Selling Price (SP) is the price at which an article is sold to the buyer. The relationship between SP and CP determines whether there's profit or loss.
- Profit occurs when SP > CP; the profit amount is (SP − CP), and the profit percentage is always calculated on the Cost Price: Profit % = [(SP − CP)/CP] × 100.
- Loss occurs when SP < CP; the loss amount is (CP − SP), and loss percentage is Loss % = [(CP − SP)/CP] × 100, again based on Cost Price.
- Marked Price (MP) is the label price or list price printed on an article before any discount is applied; it's typically higher than the seller's intended selling price.
Quick reference
- Profit = SP − CP; Loss = CP − SP — Always reference Cost Price for gain/loss
- Profit % and Loss % always calculated on CP — Never use SP or MP as base for profit/loss %
- Discount % calculated on MP — Base is Marked Price, not CP or SP
- Successive discounts formula: d₁ + d₂ − (d₁ × d₂)/100 — Never add discounts directly
- When two items sold at same SP with equal % profit and loss, net result is always loss — Loss = (x/10)² %
Check yourself: 3 questions
1. A shopkeeper buys a product for Rs 800 and sells it for Rs 1000. What is his profit percentage?
2. A trader marks his goods 40% above the cost price and allows a discount of 25%. What is his profit or loss percentage?
3. By selling an article for Rs 1440, a shopkeeper loses 10%. At what price should he sell the article to gain 20%?
This lesson is cut from the topic's note, not rewritten. Fact-checked on 21 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.
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