UP Police Constable · Bite-size lessons
Profit and Loss
About 5 min · Numerical & Mental Ability · English
Time worked out from the lesson's 271 words at 150 words a minute, plus a minute for each question.
This topic tests your ability to calculate commercial transactions, understand pricing strategies, and solve real-world buying-selling scenarios under time pressure.
Key ideas
- Cost Price (CP) is the amount paid to acquire or produce an item. All profit/loss calculations reference this baseline.
- Selling Price (SP) is the amount received when selling the item. Profit occurs when SP > CP; loss occurs when SP < CP.
- Marked Price (MP) is the listed or tagged price before any discount. Discount is always calculated on MP, not CP.
- Profit is calculated as SP − CP, while Loss is CP − SP. Profit% and Loss% are always calculated on CP unless stated otherwise.
- Discount reduces the MP to arrive at the final SP. A single discount differs from successive discounts — two 10% discounts do NOT equal 20%.
Quick reference
- Profit% = [(SP − CP) / CP] × 100; Loss% uses same pattern with CP − SP.
- Successive discounts d₁% and d₂%: Net = d₁ + d₂ − (d₁ × d₂)/100
- CP from SP with profit: CP = SP × 100 / (100 + Profit%)
- CP from SP with loss: CP = SP × 100 / (100 − Loss%)
- Discount is calculated on MP, profit/loss on CP.
Check yourself: 3 questions
1. A shopkeeper bought a shirt for ₹800 and sold it for ₹920. What is his profit percent?
2. A trader marks his goods 25% above the cost price and then allows a discount of 10%. What is his overall profit percent?
3. A dealer allows successive discounts of 20% and 10% on a product marked at ₹5000. What is the final selling price?
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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