This article is part of the ‘CAT 2016 Sprint Preparation Series’. We will be posting questions from previous year CAT papers, forums, mock tests, and other entrances that are on par with the level of difficulty you can expect in CAT 2016. We will be posting the solutions and traps/things to look at while solving similar questions so that you are avoid making silly mistakes during the test.

VARC | Set 3

CAT 2016 Sprint Preparation Series

Reading Comprehension

Passage 1:

There is an essential and irreducible ‘duality’ in the normative conceptualization of an individual person. We can see the person in terms of his or her ‘agency’, recognizing and respecting his or her ability to form goals, commitments, values, etc., and we can also see the person in terms of his or her ‘well-being’. This dichotomy is lost in a model of exclusively self-interested motivation, in which a person’s agency must be entirely geared to his or her own well-being. But once that straitjacket of self- interested motivation is removed, it becomes possible to recognize the indisputable fact that the person’s agency can well be geared to considerations not covered – or at least not fully covered – by his or her own well-being. Agency may be seen as important (not just instrumentally for the pursuit of well-being, but also intrinsically), but that still leaves open the question as to how that agency is to be evaluated and appraised. Even though the use of one’s agency is a matter for oneself to judge, the need for careful assessment of aims, objective, allegiances, etc., and the conception of the good, may be important and exacting.

To recognize the distinction between the ‘agency aspect’ and the ‘well-being aspect’ of a person does not require us to take the view that the person’s success as an agent must be independent, or completely separable from, his or her success in terms of well-being. A person may well feel happier and better off as a result of achieving what he or she wanted to achieve – perhaps for his or her family, or community, or class, or party, or some other cause. Also it is quite possible that a person’s well- being will go down as a result of frustration if there is some failure to achieve what he or she wanted to achieve as an agent, even though those achievements are not directly concerned with his or her well- being. There is really no sound basis for demanding that the agency aspect and the well-being aspect of a person should be independent of each other, and it is, I suppose, even possible that every change in one will affect the other as well. However, the point at issue is not the plausibility of their independence, but the sustainability and relevance of the distinction. The fact that two variables may be so related that one cannot change without the other, does not imply that they are the same variable, or that they will have the same values, or that the value of one can be obtained from the other on basis of some simple transformation.

The importance of an agency achievement does not rest entirely on the enhancement of well-being that it may indirectly cause. The agency achievement and well-being achievement, both of which have some distinct importance, may be casually linked with each other, but this fact does not compromise the specific importance of either. In so far as utility-based welfare calculations concentrate only on the well-being of the person, ignoring the agency aspect, or actually fails to distinguish between the agency aspect and well-being aspect altogether, something of real importance is lost.

 

1. According to the ideas in the passage, the following are not true except:

A. The value of a person’s well-being cannot be obtained from the value of her agency.

B. A person’s agency aspect is independent of her well-being aspect.

C. A person’s agency is important because her well-being must depend on her agency.

D. A person’s agency must be entirely geared towards her own well-being.

E. A person’s well-being will be dependent on her agency in all circumstances.

 

2. In the case of Japan, there is a strong empirical evidence to suggest that systematic departure from self-interested behavior, in the direction of duty, loyalty and goodwill have played a substantial part in industrial success.

Which of the following in closest to the ideas presented in the passage?

A. Japanese are duty bound selfless people.

B. The sense of well-being of the Japanese people gets consistently enhanced due to this

systematic departure from the self-interested behaviour.

C. Had there been no enhancement of their own well-being, the Japanese people would have not been dutiful.

D. Ability to achieve their country’s objectives may have enhanced the sense of well-being of

Japanese people. However the agency of the Japanese people in their industrial success is

probably derived from factors beyond this sense of well-being.

E. Japanese people’s adherence to ethos of duty, loyalty and goodwill can well be explained

within the paradigm of self-interested behaviour.

 

3. Of the options presented below, which one is the best example for the ideas propounded in the passage?

A. ‘Change for Equality’ was a campaign by women of Iran to remove discrimination against women in their country. Activities of the movement were attacked and jailed by the government, but the campaign continued.

B. In January 2011, the Egyptian people came out against the regime to topple it. Their grievances included police atrocities, state emergency laws, lack of free election, and lack of freedom of speech, corruption, unemployment, food price inflation and low minimum wages.

C. A worker immolated himself to highlight injustice being perpetrated by the management against the employees in the company.

D. The factory workers carried on with the strike in demand for increased wages, even though they were not paid wages for the duration they were on strike.

E. A politician went on a hunger strike against corruption which not only galvanized the state government in enacting new laws, but also increased his image in the minds of the voters.

 

4. Read the sentences given below and choose the option that is best in accordance with the ideas in the passage.

I. There is a need to distinguish between the agency aspect and the well-being aspect of a person.

II. A person can be conceptualized in terms of either agency or well-being.

III. A person is important, not just instrumentally, for the pursuit of well-being

A. I only B. II only C. III only D. I and III E. II and III

 

5. The idea of agency, as used in the passage, is implied in all the options given below, except:

A. A student arguing for a grade revision

B. A lawyer arguing the case for his rich client

C. A politician on dharma to gain publicity

D. A hungry child crying for food

E. An ascetic praying for world peace

 

Passage 2:

An example of scientist who could measure without instruments is Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), a physicist who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1938. He had a well-developed knack for intuitive, even casual-sounding measurements. One renowned example of his measurement skills was demonstrated at the first detonation of the atom bomb, the Trinity Test site, on July 16, 1945, where he was one of the atomic scientists observing the blast from base camp. While final adjustments were being made to instruments used to measure the yield of the blast, Fermi was making confetti out of a page of notebook paper. As the wind from the initial blast wave began to blow through the camp, he slowly dribbled the confetti into the air, observing how far back it was scattered by the blast (taking the farthest scattered pieces as being the peak of the pressure wave), Fermi concluded that the yield must be greater than 10 kilotons. This would have been news, since other initial observers of the blast did not know that lower limit. After much analysis of the instrument readings, the final yield estimate was determined to be 18.6 kilotons. Like Eratosthenes, Fermi was aware of a rule relating one simple observation – the scattering of confetti in the wind – to a quantity he wanted to measure.

 

The value of quick estimates was something Fermi was familiar with throughout his career. He was famous for teaching his students skills at approximation of fanciful-sounding quantities that, at first glance, they might presume they knew nothing about. The best-known example of such a “Fermi question” was Fermi asking his students to estimate the number of piano tuners in Chicago, when no one knows the answer. His students – science and engineering majors – would begin by saying that they could not possibly know anything about such a quantity. Of course, some solutions would be to simply do a count of every piano tuner perhaps by looking up advertisements, checking with a licensing agency of some sort, and so on. But Fermi was trying to teach his students how to solve problems where the ability to confirm the results would not be so easy. He wanted them to figure out that they knew something about the quantity in question.

 

6. Suppose you apply the same logic as Fermi applied to confetti, which of the following statements would be the most appropriate?

A. You can calculate the minimum pressure inside the cooker by calculating the maximum distance travelled by any of its parts after it explodes.

B. You can calculate the average potency of a firecracker by calculating the distance covered by one of its bigger fragments.

C. You can easily find out the average policy of an earthquake by measuring the length of a crack it makes on the surface of the earth.

D. You can calculate the exact volume of water stored in a tank by measuring the distance covered by the stream of water coming out of the tap fixed on the lower corner of the tank.

E. All the above conclusions can be drawn.

 

7. Quick estimate, as per Fermi, is most useful in:

A. In finding an approximate that is more useful than existing values.

B. In finding out the exact minimum value of an estimate.

C. In finding out the exact maximum value of an estimate.

D. In finding out the range of values of an estimate.

E. In finding out the average value of an estimate.

 

8. Given below are some statements that attempt to capture the central idea of the passage:

1. It is useful to estimate; even when the exact answer is known.

2. It is possible to estimate any physical quantity.

3. It is possible to estimate the number of units of a newly launched car that can be sold in a

city.

4. Fermi was a genius.

Which of the following statements(s) best captures the central idea?

A. 1, 2 and 4 B. 2, 3 and 4 C. 2 and 3 D. 2 only E. 1, 2 and 3

 

9. Read the statements given below:

1. Atomic bomb detonation was a result of Fermi’s Nobel Prize contribution

2. Fermi’s students respected him as a scientist

3. Yield of atomic bomb can only be measured in Kilotons

Which of the following statement(s) can be inferred from the passage?

A. 1,2 B. 2, 3 C. 1, 3

D. 2 only E. None of the three statements is correct

 

Verbal Ability

 

1. Parajumbles

A. As chroniclers of an incremental process, they discover that additional research makes it harder, not easier, to answer questions like: When was oxygen discovered? Who first conceived of energy conservation?

B. Simultaneously, these same historians confront growing difficulties in distinguishing the “scientific” component of past observation and belief from what their predecessors had readily labeled “error” and “superstition”.

C. Increasingly, a few of them suspect that these are simply the wrong sorts of questions to ask. Perhaps science does not develop by the accumulation of individual discoveries and inventions.

D. In recent years, however, a few historians of science have been finding it more and more difficult to fulfill the functions that the concept of development-by-accumulation assigns to them.

 

Directions for Q.2 to 4: Read the following sentence and choose the best alternative which should replace the italicized part of the sentence.

 

2. To be a great manager requires, strong interpersonal skills, the ability to think fast, and demands a can-do attitude.

A. requires strong inter-personal skills, the ability to think fast, and demands

B. requires strong inter-personal skills, the ability to think fast, and

C. requires strong inter-personal skills, demands the ability to think fast, and

D. requiring strong inter-personal skills, an ability to think fast, and demands

E. requires strong inter-personal skills, an ability to think fast, but with

 

3. The tremendous insight of Einstein was that the passage of time does not appear to be the same while standing still as it does to a person traveling at a speed which is a significant fraction of the speed of light.

 

A. while standing still as it does to a person traveling

B. to a person standing still as to a person traveling

C. to a person who is standing still as a person who is traveling

D. While standing still as to traveling

E. to a person standing still as to a person who travels

 

4. Economic theory fails to explain the extent to which savings from personal income has shifted to short-term bonds, money-market funds, and other near-term investments by the instability in the futures market.

A. to which savings from personal income has shifted

B. of savings from personal income that has been shifted

C. of savings from personal income shifting

D. to which savings from personal income have shifted

E. to which savings from personal income have been shifted

 

5. The author has __________ his composition to the best of his __________; yet listen to it with a sympathetic ____________, O ______________ souls, and judge it.

The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:

A. honed, insights, mind, distinguished B. polished, intellect, mind, noble

C. polished, mind, intellect, noble D. refined, ingenuity, heart, righteous E. refined, thoughts, heart, righteous

 

 

6. There is much difficulty ___________ getting ____________ this place and it is not possible to reach ______________ without the grace of the lord.

The option that best fills the blanks in the above sentence would be:

A. in; to; it B. to; to; it C. to; in; it D. in; in; in E. in; to; to

 

7. Paragraph Completion

Here, then, is our situation at the start of the twenty-first century: We have accumulated stupendous know-how. We have put it in the hands of some of the most highly trained, highly skilled, and hardworking people in our society. And, with it, they have indeed accomplished extraordinary things. Nonetheless, that know-how is often unmanageable. Avoidable failures are common and persistent, not to mention demoralizing and frustrating, across many fields—from medicine to finance, business to government. And the reason is increasingly evident.__________

 

A. The solution for this is quite simple – Develop a checklist.

B. The volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its benefits correctly, safely, or reliably

C. It begs disbelief that even in the twenty-first century we are stuck with such avoidable failures.

D. The government may be excused from this list though.

 

8. Paragraph Completion

Gibbs is perhaps the most brilliant person that most people have never heard of. Modest to the point of near invisibility, he passed virtually the whole of his life, apart from three years spent studying in Europe, within a three-block area bounded by his house and the Yale campus in New Haven, Connecticut. For his first ten years at Yale he didn’t even bother to draw a salary. (He had independent means.) From 1871, when he joined the university as a professor, to his death in 1903, his courses attracted an average of slightly over one student a semester. His written work was difficult to follow and employed a private form of notation that many found incomprehensible. ______________

 

A. But buried among his arcane formulations were insights of the loftiest brilliance.

B. But even with the notation he was the most brilliant person that most people have never heard of.

C. Yale decided to honor this genius with a statue in 1957.

D. The notation was eventually cracked and he soon became famous.

 

9. Paragraph Summary

 

Some of the most famous pieces of “unreal estate” in literary history were inspired by children’s maps. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, with its famous treasure map, would never have been written if not for Stevenson’s young stepson Lloyd, who passed a rainy summer painting watercolor maps with his stepfather in their Scottish cottage. The place-names they hand lettered onto the map, like “Skeleton Island” and “Spyglass Hill,” inspired the events of the story. And when J. M. Barrie dreamed up Peter Pan’s home isle of Neverland, he purposefully imitated the cartography of children.

 

A. Children have inspired the most famous pieces of “unreal estate” in literature right from Stevenson’s Treasure Island to J.M. Barrie’s Neverland.

B. Stevenson based his Treasure Island on the maps drawn by his young stepson Lloyd who used names such as “Skeleton Island” and “Spyglass Hill” to denote places.

C. Without the maps drawn by children, it would have been impossible for either Stevenson or Barrie to come up with their works.

D. It was sheer providence that Lloyd painted the maps on a rainy summer day. Were it not for this, neither Treasure Island nor Neverland would ever have been written.

 

10. Parajumbles

 

A. The same day that Villot was shot, Antonio Perkins, a twenty-eight-year-old Chicagoan, was broadcasting a Facebook Live feed of himself talking with people on the street.

B. Four people were wounded; Jefferies was shot dead.

C. On June 14th, Reggina Jefferies, a seventeen-year-old high-school student, attended a vigil in downtown Oakland for two friends who had drowned in a reservoir.

D. When a woman he was trying to calm fired a gun, a bullet struck him in the forehead, and he died three days later.

E. The next day, Luis Villot, a twenty-nine-year-old father of four, attempted to defuse a neighborhood dispute at the Farragut Houses, in Brooklyn, and usher some children out of harm’s way.

F. As she stood with mourners outside the service, gunfire broke out among a group of men who had been arguing nearby.

The solutions will be posted at the end of the day. Stay tuned to the CAT 2016 Sprint Preparation Series! If you have any queries, post them in the discussion group and we will be happy to reply – CAT Discussion Group

You can go through the entire series by clicking on this link: CAT 2016 Sprint Preparation Series by Learningroots.

Solutions:

Reading Comprehension

1. A. According to the second paragraph, a person’s well-being aspect and agency aspect are interconnected, though not completely dependent on each other either.

2. D. As suggested in the second paragraph, a person’s sense of well-being may be enhanced when he or she achieves what he or she wants to achieve, which may be something for the sake of others. But that does not mean that the person’s well-being is solely dependent on his achievements.

3. E. In option E alone does the person’s well-being also increase.

4. D. Statement I can be inferred from the first sentence of paragraph 2. Statement II is incorrect as the author argues against this. Statement III is stated in paragraph 1.

5.E

6. A. According to the passage, Fermi calculated the minimum yield of the atomic blast based on how far the blast wave carried the confetti.

7. D. From the last paragraph.

8. Only statement 1 captures the central idea. 1 contradicts. 3 gives a very specific example and 4 is too generic.

9. E. None of the statements can be inferred.

Verbal Ability

1. 4-1-3-2

2. B is the grammatically correct sentence.

3. B

4. E

5. B

6. A

7. B

8. A. A clearly brings out the point that Gibbs is the most brilliant person that most people have not heard of. B simply states an already mentioned point. C is irrelevant and D mentions something which is not true

9. A

10. CFBEDA