SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 2 · Quantitative Aptitude · Question 6 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

The given pie-chart shows the percentage distribution of 20,000 employees in a company. Study the given chart and answer the ques on that follows. If 30% of the employees in department D are females, then how many male employees are there in that department?

(a)4500
(b)4000
(c)5000
(d)4200

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Read D off the pie, scale it to 20,000, then split that head-count 70 : 30.

The pie labels its five slices A 20%, B 20%, C 10%, D 30% and E 20%.
Employees in D = 30% of 20,000 = 6,000

Females are 30% of D, so males are the other 70%:
0.70 × 6,000 = 4,200 → option (d)

Why the others are wrong

(a)
4500 — 4,500 is 75% of D's 6,000, not 70%. The stem puts the female share at 30%, so the male share is 70 — there is no quarter anywhere in this question.
(b)
4000 — 4,000 is 20% of the 20,000 total, the size of a whole 20% department such as A, B or E — not the male part of D.
(c)
5000 — 5,000 is 83.3% of D's 6,000, and also 25% of the workforce. No slice on this pie reads 25%, and no share in the stem reads 83%.

Concept

A pie-chart question is one reading and two multiplications.

Read the slice: D is labelled 30%.
Scale it to the total the stem supplies, not to 100: 30% of 20,000 = 6,000.
Split it by whatever second ratio is added: 30% female leaves 70% male.

The trap built into this family is mixing the two bases. The 30% female is a percentage of department D, not of the 20,000 — and taking it on the whole workforce gives 6,000, which happens to be D's own size and so looks convincingly like an answer.

The chart is titled Percentage distribution of employees in different departments of a company and carries five labelled slices — A 20%, B 20%, C 10%, D 30%, E 20% — that sum to 100%. Nothing is hidden and no angle has to be measured. The 20,000 in the stem is the only absolute number in the item.

Key facts

Department D is 30% of the workforce, and 30% of 20,000 is 6,000 employees.
If 30% of a group is female then 70% is male, so 0.70 × 6,000 = 4,200.
The five slices read A 20%, B 20%, C 10%, D 30% and E 20%, summing to 100%.
Department D holds 1,800 female employees, being 30% of its 6,000.

Study next

Pie charts given in degrees instead of percentages, where a slice is angle⁄360 of the totalTwo-source items that pair a pie with a table of male-to-female ratiosConverting a percentage share into a central angle, at 3.6° per percentage point

Common traps

Applying the 30% female to the 20,000 total instead of to department D.
Answering with D's own size, 6,000, or with its 1,800 females.
Rounding 70% of 6,000 down to 4,000, which is a whole department's head-count.

A closely matched item runs at 12 Sep 2024, 16:00, Quant Q.9, where a pie splits 1,600 employees across departments and a table adds the male-to-female ratios. A study-time pie also appears in this sitting at Quant Q.23, where 3 hours of English has to be scaled up to the Mathematics slice.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.