Study the given table answer the question that follows. The following table shows the income of a person (in thousand rupees) per annum over the given years. What is the average income from school as a salary per year earned by the person over the given years?

Correct — D. The table is an image with four columns — Year, School Salary, Coaching and Home tution — and only the School Salary column is wanted.

School Salary, 2018 to 2022: 132, 148, 166, 178, 196
Running total: 132, 280, 446, 624, 820

Average = 820 ⁄ 5 = 164
The caption reads thousand rupees, so 164 = ₹1,64,000 → option (d)

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  ₹1,58,000 — ₹1,58,000 implies a five-year total of 790, thirty short of the 820 the School Salary column actually adds to. Re-add it: 132 + 148 + 166 + 178 + 196.
• (b)
  ₹1,74,000 — ₹1,74,000 implies a total of 870, fifty above the true 820. It still lies between the smallest and largest entries, 132 and 196, so only re-adding the column catches it.
• (c)
  ₹1,48,000 — ₹1,48,000 is the 2019 School Salary figure read straight off the table. That is one year's income, not the five-year mean, and it implies a total of 740.

A table question is a reading test before it is an arithmetic one. Three things have to be fixed before any adding starts.

Which column: the stem asks for income from school as a salary, so Coaching and Home tution are decoys.

Which rows: over the given years means all five, 2018 to 2022, so the divisor is 5.

Which unit: the caption says thousand rupees, so an average of 164 is ₹1,64,000, not ₹164.

Key facts

• The School Salary column reads 132, 148, 166, 178 and 196 for 2018 to 2022.
• Those five figures total 820, and 820 ÷ 5 = 164.
• The table is captioned in thousand rupees, so 164 means ₹1,64,000.

Common traps

• Averaging the wrong column, or totalling all three money columns together
• Answering 148, a single year's figure, instead of the five-year mean
• Dropping the thousand-rupee caption and answering 164

No directly related past PYQ was found.