Order and Ranking
About 7 min · General Intelligence and Reasoning · English
Time worked out from the lesson's 507 words at 150 words a minute, plus a minute for each question.
Order and Ranking is a reasoning topic in SSC GD that tests your ability to arrange items or people in a sequence and determine their positions from either end. Questions may involve a linear arrangement where candidates must find the rank of a person from the top, bottom, left, or right, often with additional conditions like overlaps or gaps in the sequence.
Key ideas
- Linear arrangement: People, objects, or students are arranged in a single line (horizontal row or vertical column). The arrangement has two clear ends—top/bottom or left/right.
- Position from one end determines position from other: If you know someone's rank from the top and the total number of people, you can find their rank from bottom, and vice versa. The relationship is algebraic and exact.
- Overlap concept: When a problem states "X is 5th from top and Y is 8th from bottom, and there are 3 people between X and Y," the total is 5+8+3 = 16 only when X is above Y (no overlap). You must account for whether X and Y are counted and whether positions overlap.
- Double-counting trap: The most common error is counting the same person twice when adding ranks from both ends. The formula Total = Rank from top + Rank from bottom – 1 exists because the person in question appears in both counts.
- Between vs. Including: "3 people between A and B" means exactly 3 persons stand in the gap, so A and B are NOT adjacent. "Including A and B" means count them; "between" means exclude them.
Watch out for
- Double-counting the person: Using Rank from top + Rank from bottom to find total without subtracting 1. Correct fix: Always subtract 1 because the person is counted in both ranks.
- Miscounting "between": Assuming "5 people between A and B" means the gap is 5, but then adding A and B again. Correct fix: "Between" excludes A and B themselves; only count the gap people once.
- Ignoring which end stays fixed: When students leave from one end, assuming both ranks change. Correct fix: Position from one end changes only if people leave from that same end.
Quick reference
- Total = Rank from top + Rank from bottom – 1 (for the same person)
- Rank from other end = Total – Known rank + 1
- With k people between two from opposite ends: Total = Rank₁ + Rank₂ + k
- People between two from same end (positions p and q, p<q) = q – p – 1
- Middle of odd n = (n+1)/2 from either end
Check yourself: 3 questions
1. In a row of 40 students, Priya is 16th from the left end. What is her position from the right end?
2. In a class of 45 students, Rahul ranks 12th from the top. Five students who were below him left the class. What is Rahul's new rank from the bottom in the remaining class?
3. Amit is 7th from the left end and 12th from the right end in a row. How many students are there in the row?
This lesson is cut from the topic's note, not rewritten. Fact-checked on 18 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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