CAT Verbal Ability Questions | CAT Critical Reasoning questions

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In a recent report, the gross enrolment ratios at the primary level, that is the number of children enrolled in classes one to five as a proportion of all children aged 6 to 10, were shown to be very high for most states; in many cases, they were way above 100 percent. These figures are not worth anything, since they are based on the official enrolment data complied from school records. They might as well stand for ‘gross exaggeration ratios’.

Which one of the following options best supports the claim that the ratios are exaggerated?

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Szymanski suggests that the problem of racism in football may be present even today. He begins by verifying an earlier hypothesis that clubs’ wage bills explain 90% of their performance. Thus, if players’ salaries were to be only based on their abilities, clubs that spend more should finish higher. If there is pay discrimination against some group of players-fewer teams bidding for black players thus lowering the salaries for blacks with the same ability as whites-that neat relation may no longer hold. He concludes that certain clubs seem to have achieved much less than what they could have, by not recruiting black players.

Which one of the following findings would best support Szymanski’s conclusion?

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The pressure on Italy’s 257 jails has been increasing rapidly. Those jails are old and overcrowded. They are supposed to hold up to 43,000 people -----9, 000 fewer than now. San Vittore in Milan, which has 1, 800 inmates, is designed for 800. The number of foreigners inside jails has also been increasing. The minister in charge of prisons fears that tensions may snap, and so has recommended to government an amnesty policy?

Which one of the following, if true, would have most influenced the recommendation of the minister?

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The offer of the government to make iodized salt available at a low price of one rupee per kilo is welcome, especially since the government seems to be so concerned about the ill effects of non-iodized salt. But it is doubtful whether the offer will actually be implemented. Way back in 1994, the governmental methods for reducing the costs of iodization to about five paise per kilo. But these reports have remained just those reports on paper.

Which one of the following, if true most weakens the author’s contention that it is doubtful whether the offer will be actually implemented?

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About 96% of Scandinavian moths have ears tuned to the ultrasonic pulses that bats, their predators, emit. But the remaining 4% do not have ears and are deaf. However, they have a larger wingspan than the hearing moths and also have higher wing-loadings - the ratio between wing’s area and its weight- meaning higher maneuverability.

Which one of the following can be best inferred from the above passage?

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Argentina’s beef cattle herd has dropped to under 50 million from 57 million ten years ago in 1990. The animals are worthless too: prices fell by over a third last year, before recovering slightly. Most local meatpackers and processors are in financial trouble, and recent years have seen a string of plant closures. The Beef Producer’s Association has now come up with a massive advertisement campaign calling upon Argentines to eat more beef - their “juicy, healthy, rotund, plate-filling steaks.”

Which one of the following, if true, would contribute most to a failure of the campaign?

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The problem of traffic congestion in Athens has been testing the ingenuity of politicians and town planners for years. But the measures adopted to date have not succeeded in decreasing the numbers of cars on the road in the city centre. In 1980, an odds and evens number-plate legislation was introduced under which odd and even plates were banned in the city centre on alternate days, thereby expecting to halve the number of cars in the city centre. Then in 1993, it was decreed that all cars in use in the city centre must be fitted with catalytic converters; a regulation had just then been introduced, substantially reducing import taxes on cars with catalytic converters, the only condition being that the buyer of such a ‘clean’ car offered for destruction a car at least 15 years old.

Which one of the following options, if true, would best support the claim that the measures adopted to date have not succeeded.

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Although in the limited sense of freedom regarding an appointment and internal working, the independence of the Central Bank is unequivocally ensured, the same cannot be said of its right to pursue monetary policy without coordination with the central government. The role of the Central Bank has turned out to be subordinate and advisory in nature.

Which one of the following best supports the conclusion drawn in the passage?

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The Shveta-chattra or the “White Umbrella” was a symbol of sovereign political authority placed over the monarch’s head at the time of the coronation. The ruler so inaugurated was regarded not as a temporal autocrat but as the instrument of the protective and sheltering firmament of supreme law. The white umbrella symbol is of great antiquity and its varied use illustrates the ultimate common basis of the non-theocratic nature of states in the Indian traditions As such, the umbrella is found, although not necessarily a white one, over the head of Lord Ram, the Mohammedan sultans and Chatrapati Shivaji.

Which of the following best summarizes the above passage?

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The theory of games is suggested to some extent by parlour games such as chess and bridge. Friedman illustrates two distinct features of these games. First in a parlour game played for money, if one wins the other (others )loses (lose). Second, these games are games involving a strategy. In a game of chess, while choosing what action is to be taken, a player tries to guess how his/ her opponent will react to the various actions he or she might take. In contrast, the card-pastime, ‘patience ‘ or ‘solitaire’ is played only against chance.

Which one of the following can best be described as a ‘game?”

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Three airlines IA, JA, and SA—operate on the Delhi-Mumbai route. To increase the number of seats sold, SA reduces the fare and this was emulated by IA and JA immediately. The general belief was that the volume of air travel between Delhi and Mumbai would increase as a result.

Which of the following, if true, would add credence to the general belief?

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According to McNeill, a Brahmin priest was expected to be able to recite at least one of the Vedas. The practice was essential for several centuries when the Vedas had not yet been written down. It must have had a selective effect since priests would have been recruited from those able or willing to memorize long passages. It must have helped in the dissemination of the work since a memorized passage can be duplicated many times.

Which one of the following can be inferred from the above passage?

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Developed countries have made adequate provisions for social security for senior citizens. State insurers (as well as private ones) offer medicare and pension benefits to people who can no longer earn. In India, with the collapse of the joint family system, the traditional shelter of the elderly has disappeared. And a state faced with a financial crunch is not in a position to provide financial security. So, it is advisable that the working population give serious thought to building a financial base for itself.

Which one of the following, if it were to happen, weakens the conclusion drawn in the above passage the most?

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Various studies have shown that our forested and hilly regions, in general, where biodiversity (as reflected in the variety of flora) is high, are places where poverty appears to be high. And these same areas are also the ones where educational performance seems to be poor. Therefore, it may be surmised that, even disregarding poverty status, richness in biodiversity goes hand in hand with educational backwardness.

Which one of the following statements, if true, can be said to best provide supporting evidence for the surmise mentioned in the passage?

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Cigarettes constitute a mere 20% of tobacco consumption in India. And fewer than 15% of the 200 million tobacco users consume cigarettes. Yet this 15% contribute nearly 90% of the tax revenues to the Exchequer from the tobacco sector. The punitive cigarette taxation regime has kept the tax base narrow, and reducing taxes will expand this base.

Which one of the following best bolsters the conclusion that reducing duties will expand the tax base?

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Thomas Malthus, the British clergyman turned economist, predicted that the planet would not be able to support the human population for long. His explanation was that human population grows at a geometric rate, while the food supply grows at an arithmetic rate.

Which one of the following, if true, would not undermine the thesis offered by Malthus?

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The company’s coffee crop for 1998-99 totaled 8079 tonnes, an all-time record. The increase over the previous year’s production of 5830 tonnes was 38.58%. The previous highest crop was 6089 tonnes in 1970-71. The company had fixed a target to be realized by the year 2000-01, and this has been achieved two years earlier, thanks to the emphasis laid on the key areas of irrigation, replacement of unproductive coffee bushes, intensive refilling, and improved agricultural practices. It is now our endeavor to reach the target of 10000 tonnes in the year 2001-02.

Which one of the following would contribute most to making the target of 10000 tonnes in 2001-02 unrealistic?

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Animals in general are shrewd in proportion as they cultivate society. Elephants and beavers show the greatest signs of this sagacity when they are together in large numbers, but when man invades their communities they lose all their spirit of industry. Among insects, the labours of the bee and the ant have attracted the attention and admiration of naturalists, but all their sagacity seems to be lost upon separation, and a single bee or ant seems destitute of every degree of industry. It becomes the most stupid insect imaginable, and it languishes and soon dies.

Which of the following can be inferred from the above passage

Directions for the Questions: For each of the two questions, indicate which of the statements given with that particular question is consistent with the description of the unseasonable man in the passage below.

Unseasonableness is a tendency to do socially permissible things at the wrong time. The unseasonable man is the sort of person who comes to confide in you when you are busy. He serenades his beloved when she’s ill. He asks a man who has just money by paying a bill for a friend to pay a bill for him. He invites a friend to go for a ride just after the friend has finished a long car trip. He is eager to offer services that are not wanted but which cannot be politely refused. If he is present at an arbitration, he stirs up dissension between the two parties, who were really anxious to agree, such is the unseasonable man.

He tends to______________________

Directions for the Questions: For each of the two questions, indicate which of the statements given with that particular question is consistent with the description of the unseasonable man in the passage below.

Unseasonableness is a tendency to do socially permissible things at the wrong time. The unseasonable man is the sort of person who comes to confide in you when you are busy. He serenades his beloved when she’s ill. He asks a man who has just money by paying a bill for a friend to pay a bill for him. He invites a friend to go for a ride just after the friend has finished a long car trip. He is eager to offer services that are not wanted but which cannot be politely refused. If he is present at an arbitration, he stirs up dissension between the two parties, who were really anxious to agree, such is the unseasonable man.

The unseasonable man tends to_____________

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Efficiency is all right in its place, in the shop, the factory, the store. The trouble with efficiency is that it wants to rule our play as well as our work; it won’t be content to reign in the shop, it follows us home.

It can be inferred from the above passage that:

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In order to ease the traffic congestion, the transport planners decided to have a sophisticated system of elevated monorail travel in the city. However, it was pointed out by somebody that a metro rail system would be a more effective solution to the traffic problem. The plan was thus stalled. Moreover, since a budget had not been drawn up for the project, it was deemed fit to stall the work of the monorail for some time. In the meanwhile, the traffic planners of the city decided to build an efficient system of subways and flyovers in the city with the aim of easing the same problem. At the instant when the planners were preparing to award the contracts to the concerned parties, the transport planners came up with the contention that the subways interfered with the site of a pillar of the monorail system. The traffic planners had to give up the idea and think of other possible solutions.

On the basis of the above passage, it can be inferred that,

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The company encourages its managers to interact regularly, without a pre-set agenda, to discuss issues concerning the company and society. This idea has been borrowed from the ancient Indian concept of a religious congregation, called Satsang. Designations are forgotten during these meetings; hence, it is not uncommon in these meetings to find a sales engineer questioning the CEO on some corporate policy or on his knowledge of customers.

Based on the information provided in the above passage, it can be inferred that

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From Cochin to Shimla, the new culture vultures are tearing down acres of India’s architectural treasures. Ancestral owners often fobbed off with a few hundred rupees for an exquisitely carved door or window, which fetches fifty times that much from foreign dealers, and yet more from the drawing-room sophisticates of Europe and the US. The reason for such shameless rape of the Indian architectural wealth can perhaps, not wrongly, be attributed to the unfortunate blend of activist disunity and local indifference.

It can be inferred from the above passage that

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Deepa Mehta’s Fire is under fire from the country’s self-appointed moral police. Their contention is that the film is a violation of the Indian cultural mores and cannot be allowed to influence the Indian psyche. According to them, such films ruin the moral fabric of the nation, which must be protected and defended against such intrusions at all cost, even at the cost of cultural dictatorship.

Based on the information in the above passage, it can be inferred that

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The dominant modern belief is that the soundest foundation of peace would be universal prosperity. One may look in vain for historical evidence that the rich have regularly been more peaceful than the poor, but then it can be argued that they have never felt secure against the poor; that their aggressiveness stemmed from fear; and that the situation would be quite different if everybody were rich.

It can be inferred from the above passage that:

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The effect produced on the mind by travelling depends entirely on the mind of the traveller and on the way in which he conducts himself. The chief idea of one very common type of traveller is to see as many objects of interest as he possibly can. If he can only after his return home say that he has seen such and such a temple, castle, picture gallery, or museum, he is perfectly satisfied. Far different is the effect of travels upon those who leave their country with minds prepared by culture to feel intelligent admiration for all the beauties of nature and art to be found in foreign lands. When they visit a new place, instead of hurrying from temple to museum to picture gallery, they allow the spirit of the place to sink into their minds, and only visit such monuments as the time they have at their disposal allows them to contemplate without irreverent haste.

It can be inferred from the above passage that

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Whether we look at the intrinsic value of our literature, or at the particular situation of this country, we shall see the strongest reason to think that of all foreign tongues the English tongue is that which would be the most useful to our native subjects.

It can be inferred that

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Where the film Bombay loses out is where every commercial film congenitally goes awry- becoming too simplistic to address serious issues and failing to translate real-life to reel.

Based on the information in the passage, it can be inferred that

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Aspiration is nothing new. Neither is the debate over what the Indian middle class is, what it wants and what it buys. Since the mid - 80s, that has been the focus of the economic policy papers, so-called pro, and anti-poor budgets, and marketing strategies that have successfully broken the barrier of urban selling and reached deeper into rural India with increasing income levels and aspirations.

Based on the above passage it can be inferred that

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But because the idea of private property has been permitted to override, with its selfishness, the common good of humanity, it does not follow that there are no limits within which that idea can function for the general convenience and advantage.

Which of the following is most likely to weaken the argument?

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The writer can only be fertile if he renews himself and he can only renew himself if his soul is constantly enriched by the fresh experience.

Which of the following is most likely to support the above thought?

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Unless you devote your whole life to it, you will never learn to speak the language of another country to perfection; you will never know its people and its literature with complete intimacy.

Which of the following is likely to undermine the above argument?

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I have been studying it, consciously and subconsciously, for forty years and I still find men unaccountable; people I know intimately can surprise me by some action of which I never thought them capable or by the discovery of some trait exhibit a side of themselves that I never even suspected.

The idea in this sentence can be best summarised as

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Now the audience is a very curious animal. It is shrewd rather than intelligent. Its mental capacity is less than that of its most intellectual members. If these were graded from A to Z, decreasing with succeeding letters to the zero of the hysterical shop girl, I should say its mental capacity would come around about the letter O.

According to the above statements: