- DI & DS
- English Language
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Intelligence & CR
- Alphabet & Number Ranking
- Analytical Reasoning
- Blood Relations Test
- Coding - Decoding
- Comparision of Ranks
- Direction Sense Test
- Mathematical Operation / Number Puzzles
- Series
- Sitting Arrangement
- Statement and Arguement
- Statement and Conclusion
- Statement and Course of Action
- Statement-Assumption
- Syllogism
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Mathematical Skills
- Average
- Calender
- Clocks
- Geometry
- Height and Distance
- Logarithms
- Mensuration
- Mixtures and Alligations
- Number System
- Percentage
- Permutation and Computation
- Probability
- Profit and Loss
- Ratio and Proportion
- Set Theory
- Simple calculations
- Simple Equations
- Simple Interest and Compound Interest
- Time and Work
- Time, Speed and Distance
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62.
The difficulties historians face in establishing cause-and-effect relations in the history of human societies are broadly similar to the difficulties facing astronomers, climatologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, geologists, and palaeontologists. To varying degrees each of these fields is plagued by the impossibility of performing replicated, controlled experimental interventions, the complexity arising from enormous numbers of variables, the resulting uniqueness of each system, the consequent impossibility of formulating universal laws, and the difficulties of predicting emergent properties and future behaviour. Prediction in history, as in other historical sciences, is most feasible on large spatial scales and over long times, when the unique features of millions of small-scale brief events become averaged out. Just as I could predict the sex ratio of the next 1,000 newborns but not the sexes of my own two children, the historian can recognize factors that made inevitable the broad outcome of the collision between American and Eurasian societies after 13,000 years of separate developments, but not the outcome of the 1960 U.S. presidential election. The details of which candidate said what during a single televised debate in October 1960 Could have given the electoral victory to Nixon instead of to Kennedy, but no details of who said what could have blocked the European conquest of Native Americans.
How can students of human history profit from the experience of scientists in other historical sciences? A methodology that has proved useful involves the comparative method and so-called natural experiments. While neither astronomers studying galaxy formation nor human historians can manipulate their systems in controlled laboratory experiments, they both can take advantage of natural experiments, by comparing systems differing in the presence or absence (or in the strong or weak effect) of some putative causative factor. For example, epidemiologists, forbidden to feed large amounts of salt to people experimentally, have still been able to identify effects of high salt intake by comparing groups of humans who already differ greatly in their salt intake; and cultural anthropologists, unable to provide human groups experimentally with varying resource abundances for many centuries, still study long-term effects of resource abundance on human societies by comparing recent Polynesian populations living on islands differing naturally in resource abundance.
The student of human history can draw on many more natural experiments than just comparisons among the five inhabited continents. Comparisons can also utilize large islands that have developed complex societies in a considerable degree of isolation (such as Japan, Madagascar, Native American Hispaniola, New Guinea, Hawaii, and many others), as well as societies on hundreds of smaller islands and regional societies within each of the continents. Natural experiments in any field, whether in ecology or human history, are inherently open to potential methodological criticisms. Those include confounding effects of natural variation in additional variables besides the one of interest, as well as problems in inferring chains of causation from observed correlations between variables. Such methodological problems have been discussed in great detail for some of the historical sciences. In particular, epidemiology, the science of drawing inferences about human diseases by comparing groups of people (often by retrospective historical studies), has for a long time successfully employed formalized procedures for dealing with problems similar to those facing historians of human societies.
In short, I acknowledge that it is much more difficult to understand human history than to understand problems in fields of science where history is unimportant and where fewer individual variables operate. Nevertheless, successful methodologies for analyzing historical problems have been worked out in several fields. As a result, the histories of dinosaurs, nebulae, and glaciers are generally acknowledged to belong to fields of science rather than to the humanities.[1] Why do islands with considerable degree of isolation provide valuable insights into human history?
(1) Isolated islands may evolve differently and this difference is of interest to us.
(2) Isolated islands increase the number of observations available to historians.
(3) Isolated islands, differing in their endowments and size may evolve differently and this difference can be attributed to their endowments and size.
(4) Isolated islands, in so far as they are inhabited, arouse curiosity about how human beings evolved there.[2] According to the author, why is prediction difficult in history?
(1) Historical explanations are usually broad so that no prediction is possible.
(2) Historical out comers depend upon a large number of factors and hence predictions is difficult for each case.
(3) Historical sciences, by their very nature, are not interested in a multitude of minor factors, which might be important in a specific historical outcome.
(4) Historians are interested in evolution of human history and hence are only interested in log term predictions.
(5) Historical sciences suffer from the inability to conduct controlled experiments and therefore have explanations based on a few long-term factors.[3] According to the author, which of the following statements would be true?
(1) Students of history are missing significant opportunities by not conducting any natural experiments.
(2) Complex societies inhabiting large islands provide great opportunities for natural experiments.
(3) Students of history are missing significant opportunities by not studying an adequate variety of natural experiments.
(4) A unique problem faced by historians is their inability to establish cause and effect relationships.
(5) Cultural anthropologists have overcome the problem of confounding variables through natural experiments.
asked in CAT
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63.
Each of the following questions has a paragraph from which the last sentence has been deleted. From the given options, choose the sentence that completes the paragraph in the most appropriate way.
[1] Characters are also part of deep structure. Characters tie events in a story together and provide a thread of continuity and meaning. Stories can be about individuals, groups, projects or whole organizations, so from an organizational studies perspective, the focal actor(s) determine the level and unit of analysis used in a study. Stories of mergers and acquisitions, for example, are common place. In these stories whole organizations are personified as actors. But these macro-level stories usually are not told from the perspective of the macro-level participants, because whole organizations cannot narrate their experiences in the first person.
(1) More generally, data concerning the identities and relationships of the characters in the story are required, if one is to understand role structure and social networks in which that process is embedded.
(2) Personification of a whole organization abstracts away from the particular actors and from traditional notions of level of analysis.
(3) The personification of a whole organization is important because stories differ depending on who is enacting various events.
(4) Every story is told from a particular point of view, with a particular narrative voice, which is not regarded as part of the deep structure.
(5) The personification of a whole organization is a textual device we use to make macro-level theories more comprehensible.
[2] Nevertheless, photographs still retain some of the magical allure that the earliest daguerreotypes inspired. As objects, our photographs have changed; they have become physically flimsier as they have become more technologically sophisticated. Daguerre produced pictures on copper plates; today many of our photographs never become tangible thins, but instead remain filed away on computers and cameras, part of the digital ether that envelops the modern world. At the same time, our patience for the creation of images has also eroded. Children today are used to being tracked from birth by digital cameras and video recorders and they expect to see the results of their poses and performances instantly. The space between life as it is being lived and life as it is being displayed shrinks to a mere second.
(1) Yet, despite these technical developments, photographs still remain powerful because they are reminders of the people and things we care about.
(2) Images, after all, are surrogates carried into battle by a soldier or by a traveller on holiday.
(3) Photographs, be they digital or traditional, exist to remind us of the absent, the beloved, and the dead.
(4) In the new era of the digital image, the images also have a greater potential for fostering falsehood and trickery, perpetuating fictions that seem so real we cannot tell the difference.
(5) Anyway, human nature being what it is, little time has passed after photography’s inventions became means of living life through images.[3] Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. These were its assets; a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter. Then there was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe - the only private lady detective in Botswana - brewed red bush tea. And three mugs - one for herself, one for her secretary and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really nee? Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance.
(1) But there was also the view, which again would appear on no inventory.
(2) No inventory would ever include those, of course.
(3) She had an intelligent secretary too.
(4) She was a good detective and a good woman.
(5) What she lacked in possessions was more than made up by a natural shrewdness.asked in CAT
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64.
To discover the relation between rules, paradigms, and normal science, consider first how the historian isolates the particular loci of commitment that have been described as accepted rules. Close historical investigation of a given specialty at a given time discloses a set of recurrent and quasi-standard illustrations of various theories in their conceptual, observational, and instrumental applications. These are the community's paradigms, revealed in its textbooks, lectures, and laboratory exercises. By studying them and by practicing with them, the members of the corresponding community learn their trade. The historian, of course, will discover in addition a penumbral area occupied by achievements whose status is still in doubt, but the core of solved problems and techniques will usually be clear. Despite occasional ambiguities, the paradigms of a mature scientific community can be determined with relative ease.
That demands a second step and one of a somewhat different kind. When undertaking it, the historian must compare the community's paradigms with each other and with its current research reports. In doing so, his object is to discover what isolable elements, explicit or implicit, the members of that community may have abstracted from their more global paradigms and deploy it as rules in their research. Anyone who has attempted to describe or analyze the evolution of a particular scientific tradition will necessarily have sought accepted principles and rules of this sort. Almost certainly, he will have met with at least partial success. But, if his experience has been at all like my own, he will have found the search for rules both more difficult and less satisfying than the search for paradigms. Some of the generalizations he employs to describe the community's shared beliefs will present more problems. Others, however, will seem a shade too strong. Phrased in just that way, or in any other way he can imagine, they would almost certainly have been rejected by some members of the group he studies. Nevertheless, if the coherence of the research tradition is to be understood in terms of rules, some specification of common ground in the corresponding area is needed. As a result, the search for a body of rules competent to constitute a given normal research tradition becomes a source of continual and deep frustration.
Recognizing that frustration, however, makes it possible to diagnose its source. Scientists can agree that a Newton, Lavoisier, Maxwell, or Einstein has produced an apparently permanent solution to a group of outstanding problems and still disagree, sometimes without being aware of it, about the particular abstract characteristics that make those solutions permanent. They can, that is, agree in their identification of a paradigm without agreeing on, or even attempting to produce, a full interpretation or rationalization of it. Lack of a standard interpretation or of an agreed reduction to rules will not prevent a paradigm from guiding research. Normal science can be determined in part by the direct inspection of paradigms, a process that is often aided by but does not depend upon the formulation of rules and assumption. Indeed, the existence of a paradigm need not even imply that any full set of rules exists.[1] What is the author attempting to illustrate through this passage?
(1) Relationships between rules, paradigms, and normal science.
(2) How a historian would isolate a particular ‘loci of commitment’.
(3) How a set of shared beliefs evolve in to a paradigm.
(4) Ways of understanding a scientific tradition.
(5) The frustrations of attempting to define a paradigm of a tradition.[2] The term ‘loci of commitment’ as used in the passage would most likely correspond with which of the following?
(1) Loyalty between a group of scientists in a research laboratory.
(2) Loyalty between groups of scientists across research laboratories.
(3) Loyalty to a certain paradigm of scientific inquiry.
(4) Loyalty to global patterns of scientific inquiry.
(5) Loyalty to evolving trends of scientific inquiry.[3] The author of this passage is likely to agree with which of the following?
(1) Paradigms almost entirely define a scientific tradition.
(2) A group of scientists investigating a phenomenon would benefit by defining a set of rules.
(3) Acceptance by the giants of a tradition is a sine qua non for a paradigm to emerge.
(4) Choice of isolation mechanism determines the types of paradigm that may emerge from a tradition.
(5) Paradigms are a general representation of rules and beliefs of a scientific tradition.asked in CAT
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65.
In each question, there are four sentences. Each sentence has pairs of words/phrases that are italicized and highlighted. From the italicized and highlighted word(s)/phrase(s), select the most appropriate word(s)/phrase(s) to form correct sentences. Then, from the options given, choose the best one.
[1] The cricket council that was[A]/were[B] elected last March is[A]/are[B] at sixes and sevens over new rules.
The critics censored[A]/censured[B] the new movie because of its social inaccessibility. Amit’s explanation for missing the meting was credulous[A]/credible[B]. She coughed discreetly[A]/discretely[B] to announce her presence.
1) BBAAA
2) AAABA
3) BBBBA
4) AABBA
5) BBBAA[2] The further[A]/farther[B] he pushed himself, the more disillusioned he grew.
For the crowds it was more of a historical[A]/historic[B] event; for their leader, it was just another day. The old man has a healthy distrust[A]/mistrust[B] for all new technology. This film is based on a real[A]/true [B] story. One suspects that the compliment[A]/complement[B] was backhanded.
1) BABAB
2) ABBBA
3) BAABA
4) BBAAB
5) ABABA[3] Regrettably[A]/Regretfully[B] I have to decline your invitation.
I am drawn to the poetic, sensual[A]/sensuous[B] quality of her paintings. He was besides[A]/beside[B] himself with rage when I told him what I had done. After brushing against a stationary[A]/stationery[B] truck my car turned turtle. As the water began to rise over[A]/above[B] the danger mark, the signs of an imminent flood were clear.
1) BAABA
2) BBBAB
3) AAABA
4) BBAAB
5) BABAB
asked in CAT
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66.