Use These Quick Mental Math Techniques to Ace Calculation Speed for CAT Quant

Mental Math Hacks to Boost Calculation Speed for CAT QA: Mental math helps you QA questions in CAT quickly and accurately. If you gain expertise in speed math, you no longer need to depend on calculators and your mathematical understanding, accuracy, and problem-solving skills will be enhanced helping you maximize your scores. Using these, you will be able to solve a vast number of questions within a limited time and obtain the correct answer while saving time during the CAT 2025 exam .
Also Check - How to Approach CAT 2025 Question Paper: Key Points to Remember While Attempting the Exam

How to Improve Mental Math Skills to Boost Calculation Speed for CAT QA?

Develop a well-structured strategy, learn shortcut techniques, break down bigger problems into smaller ones smartly, and practise consistently to improve speed math for the CAT QA section. Follow the steps mentioned below to develop these skills:

• If you wish to solve CAT QA questions rapidly and do calculations quickly, memorizing multiplication tables up to 20, squares up to 30, and cubes up to 15 is a must.
• Increase your calculation speed by revising divisibility rules and frequently used percentage-fraction equivalents everyday.
• Arithmetic questions can be solved within a short time by taking resort to Vedic math tricks, vertical and cross-wise multiplication , rounding the figures and then adding and subtracting, quick root or square methods, etc.
• Shortcut tricks must be the only way to square, find roots, and calculate LCM/ HCF quickly.
• Solving a complex problem all at once is not suggested. Rather, divide it into smaller components to manage each section easily.
• Eliminating options or reverse checking or back-calculating reduce a lot of load on calculation while solving MCQs.
• If you want to maintain 90% accuracy while solving questions, practise as many mental math sets requiring mid-level calculations and QA questions from previous CAT papers in a timed manner.
• Solve a full-length mock test at least once a week to understand which are your weak areas and dedicate extra time to strengthen the topics where you make calculation errors.

Mental Math for CAT QA Formulas

• Multiplication questions can be solved easily by using Vedic Math tricks and breaking down two-digit numbers.
• 10% of any number can be calculated by simply moving the decimal point one place to the left. To obtain 50% of any number, divide the number by 2.
• By using nearly values, you can approximate square roots for numbers that are close to perfect squares.
• The prime factorization method is the highly preferred way of calculating LCM & HCF.

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