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45 votes
45 votes

What are the most common mistakes you have made in tests? A good list will help aspirants reduce their mistakes in GATE. Just listing out some common ones.

  1. Missing the “NOT” in question – our eyes have a tendency to focus on important words and miss the “NOT”
  2. Question might be asking “FALSE” statement – again our mind tend to focus more on positive ones and hence ignore “FALSE” in the sentence
  3. $A \implies B$ does not mean $B \implies A$ or $\neg A \implies \neg B.$ (It does mean $\neg A \vee B \equiv \neg B \implies \neg A).$ Usually this mistake is committed in interpreting many statements
  4. Closure property misuse – A set $A $ not closed under operator $*$ means for $a,b \in A, a*b $ MAY or MAY NOT be in $A.$ Many people think it is always NOT in $A$
  5. Missing “0” – when you do large calculations ensure that the final answer is copied exactly without missing any digits – this can happen for Numerical questions
  6. “Unit” – Being aware of the units in the question can ensure you avoid many calculation mistakes. In any formula you do, you must get the correct unit for the result

Please add more as answers. 

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Take care of BINARY & BOOLEAN in Digital circuit & design logic problems.

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take care of semi colons in while loops while solving synchronization problems
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  1. True / False / Correct / Incorrect / Not True / Not False / Not Correct / Not incorrect
  2. Possibly true / must be true / necessarily true
  3. Can be, Always, for All, for Any, for Every, ONLY
  4. Units- bits / bytes / milli / micro / nano
  5. Value / Ratio / Percentage
  6. Binary AND / Bitwise AND
  7. Don’t do big calculations in your head, either write it down and solve clearly, or use calculator
  8. Keep track of time
  9. Don’t get attached to the question
  10. Focus when to take Ceil value or Floor value
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9 Answers

18 votes
18 votes
Verifying what is asked and what you calculated is same thing or not!

For eg. In a pipelining question, average time was asked. Number of instructions and other relevant information was given. So, I ended up calculating total time and typed it in the box without dividing it by number of instructions!
14 votes
14 votes
Gave gate twice. In 2018 - 51 marks. In 2019 - 59 marks. Here's my list (including mistakes I did for Gate in general) -

1. There was a fragmentation question in gate 18. I forgot to divide by 8 to calculate offset. In Gate 19, I forgot to multiply by 8 (8 word block size) in a question where max memory bandwidth was asked. So, missing your answers by one inch.

2. Assuming question is difficult and leaving without even reading it properly. In Gate 19, I left room allocation question without even reading it as i thought it is difficult. Later realized it wouldn't have took more than two minutes. It was worth two marks.

3. There was sql question in Gate 19. According to sql query we were supposed to do only cross product as there was no join condition but we tend to do what we have done a thousand time ignoring the question requires something bit different. I did natural join. Again 2 marks.

4. Trying to predict the difficulty level of exam in advance and calculating how much marks do you need and similar kind of things. I told myself entire year that I need 60+ marks. I got 59, close to what I wanted. But, as you see in Gate 19 that's just not enough. Aim for maximum marks only.

5. Leaving difficult topics is another mistake people do and I have done too both the times. You just can't do that. I left engineering maths both the times and it cost me at least 3-4 marks that I would have scored easily if I hadn't left it.

7. Aptitude and maths is ultimately what will make you topper. You can't run away from that. You need to score close to 100 percent in aptitude. You need to be really good in maths as probability can pop up in any of the 65 questions, gate 19 is a good example of that. For discrete maths, you must read kenneth rosen and solve exercises. Notes won't help you for the kind of question that come in discrete in gate.

7. For 2nd timers - Don't repeat what you have done first time for preparation. I did that. It won't get you anywhere. Just because it's your 2nd attempt doesn't mean you'll get better rank. You need to level up and work really hard to improve.

8. Lastly, you need to push and do what's hard. Everyone is doing the easy stuff. You can't score high and be in your comfort zone at the same time.

Other mistakes that you usually do in test like bit-bytes, missing correct - incorrect, true - false kind of things can be fixed if you give a large number of test. I gave 80 test and these were reduced greatly. Aim for 100+ test. Same for negative marking. Both the times I got only 1 mark negative.

Good luck :)
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1 comment

In join question,

if it is cross product all rows will return and if it is join will remove some rows

Might be this logic plunge to errors
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9 votes
9 votes

In logic "sentence1 if sentence2" and "sentence1 only if sentence 2". This ONLY IF has costed me many times during test.

Suggestion : When dealing with theoretical questions, convert everything in form of logic form. Once you do this the terms "OR", "AND", "ALL", "There exist". You will not miss these and it is easy to form counter example once you have sentence in form of proposition.

1 comment

Remember the format:

P only if Q

Q if P
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5 votes
5 votes
They will give some  calculation and will say it as X and now they will ask to enter what is 2X or something like that.

We will do all the calculation and will enter the value of X instead of asked value...

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