CAT 2017 Verbal Ability Preparation - PaGaLGuY

MBA CAT 2024
541

Poem:

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d

Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when

Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’

Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!

As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains; but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this grey spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.


Q) Which of the following statements is incorrectly drawn from the passage?

  A) The poem valorises physical prowess, not strength of mind.

  B)The speaker of the poem is breaking away from the confinements of governance.

  C) The speaker has known great triumph and it has made him restless.

  D) The experiences of his life have left the speaker far richer than an ordinary man.

542

Can anyone provide link to any video lectures on reading comprehensions? 

543

 

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544

 Guys I have created a group for CAT aspirants from Kolkata. Join the group to discuss all your CAT related queries.https://www.pagalguy.com/discussions/cat-2016-kolkata-aspirants-46151899 

545

 PJ:



1). Electronic transactions are happening in closed group networks and Internet. Electronic commerce is one of the most important aspects of Internet to emerge.


2). Cash transactions offer both privacy and anonymity as it does not contain information that can be used to identify the parties nor the transaction history.


3). To support e-commerce, we need effective payment systems and secure communication channels and data integrity.


4). The whole structure of traditional money is built on faith and so will electronic money have to be.


5). Moreover, money is worth what it is because we have come  to accept it.


546

PJ


A. This may mean breaking up old relationships to create more positive and productive ones.


B. Relationships can be developed from and determined by politics.


C. Any assessment performed to change an organization’s environment should include possible political ramifications of transformation.


D. Individual and organizational performance can be affected by myriad political influences, which can come from both internal and external sources.


E. Changing an organization’s environment should coincide with changing problematic political practices.

547

 Given below are four/five sentences. Identify the sentence(s) that is/are correct in terms of grammar and usage (including spelling, punctuation and logical consistency).


 

A. Few products and services are used in a vaccum.


B. In most cases, other products and services affect their value.


C. But in most industries, rivals converge within the bounds of their industry’s product and service offerings.


D. Take movie theatres. The ease and cost to get a babysitter and parking the car affect the perceived value of going to the movies.


E. Yet these complementary services are beyond the bounds of the movie theatre industry as it has been traditionally defined. 

548

PJ (:-P)


 

A. Nude is what you are when you have, with intent, taken your clothes off.


B. It also implies the presence of a witness; and perhaps the transgression of public nudism is that there are multiple witnesses whose consent has not been sought.


C. Naked is what you are when you haven't got your clothes on.


D. Nakedness is a state; nudity is an upside-down metonym.


E. It invites the very sexual speculation it claims to obliterate. 

549

PJ 


 

A. Online, one can be anything, anyone, of any age, gender, nationality, biography or appearance.


B. And yet one may use words and delve into verbal play to enact one’s deepest psyche, to reveal the identity that is buried in everyday life and useless in the real world of social interaction.


C. To hook up by way of words is often to play hooky with a reality that doesn’t obey our words.


D. It is to search for a psychic order that can be forcefully denied by social order and which one would like to stealthily achieve in the deepest recesses in one’s mind.


E. Hence the intensely erotic nature of such play, which, in a way, is an alternative outlet for repressed energies and emotions, without any fear of being caught.

550

any link of good quality verbal sectional tests??

551

Hey. ...i m new here pls help me...

552

 Johnson is on firm ground when he asserts that the early editors of Dickinson’s poetry often distorted her intentions. Yet Johnson’s own, more faithful, text is still guilty of its own forms of distortion. To standardize Dickinson’s often indecipherable handwritten punctuation by the use of the dash is to render permanent a casual mode of poetic phrasing that Dickinson surely never expected  to see in print. It implies that Dickinson chose the dash as her typical mark of punctuation when, in fact, she apparently never made any definitive choice at all. 

 Which of the following best summarizes the author’s main point?  

  • Although Johnson’s attempt to produce a more faithful text of Dickinson’s poetry is well-meaning, his study of the material lacks sufficient thoroughness.
  • Dickinson’s editors, including Johnson, have failed to deal adequately with the problem of deciphering Dickinson’s handwritten manuscripts.
  • Although Johnson is right in criticizing Dickinson’s early editors for their distortion of her work, his own text is guilty of equally serious distortions
  • Johnson’s use of the dash in his text of Dickinson’s poetry misleads readers about the poet’s intentions.
  • Because Dickinson never expected her poetry to be published, virtually any attempt at editing it must run counter to her intentions

0 voters

553

 Companies considering new cost-cutting manufacturing processes often compare the projected results of making the investment against the alternative of not making the investment with costs, selling prices, and share of market remaining constant.
Which of the following, assuming that each is a realistic possibility, constitutes the most serious disadvantage for companies of using the method above for evaluating the financial benefit of new manufacturing processes? 

  • Competitors that do invest in a new process might reduce their selling prices and thus take market share away from companies that do not.
  • The costs of materials required by the new process might not be known with certainty.
  • In several years interest rates might go down, reducing the interest costs of borrowing money to pay for the investment.
  • Some cost-cutting processes might require such expensive investments that there would be no net gain for many years, until the investment was paid for by savings in the manufacturing process.
  • The period of year chosen for averaging out the cost of the investment might be somewhat longer or shorter, thus affecting the result.

0 voters

554

Facts, Inferences, Judgements and the never-ending confusion 😏 


(i) India ranks remarkably high in the “Criminals in Politics” sub-index, a result perhaps of a record number of criminals having been elected to the current Lok Sabha.
(ii) Once upon a time, people in search of data about criminal records of a person had to hire private investigators to navigate byzantine court-houses and rudimentary filing or computer systems, and to deal with grim-faced legal clerks.
(iii) In a way, the obstacles to getting criminal information maintained a valuable, ignorance-fuelled civil peace.
(iv) Convicts could start afresh after serving their time without strangers knowing their pasts.
(v) Criminalsearches.com is a site that lets people search by name through criminal archives which might upset the social balance once preserved by the difficulty of obtaining public documents like criminal records.

555

  

In 2003, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson were developing new human resources guidelines at Best Buy, an electronics retailer, when they suggested a profound shift in the way the company managed its employees. They wondered what might happen if they granted workers 100 percent autonomy and expected of them 100 percent accountability. What if employees were judged solely on the work they did and not at all on the manner in which they did it? Ressler and Thompson dubbed their plan the Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE. The scheme involved some radical proposals. People could work from home absolutely anytime they felt like it, without needing a reason or excuse. There would be no such thing as a sick day or a vacation allotment – employees could take off as much time as they wanted, whenever they saw fit. Perhaps most provocative: all meetings would be optional. Even if your boss had invited you. Don't think you need to be there? Don't come. In return for this absolute freedom, workers would need to produce. Bosses would set macro expectations (e.g., increase sales by 10 percent) and then assess the results without micromanaging (e.g., keeping tabs on who arrived at the office earliest in the morning or left latest at night). If the goal was met, there were no complaints from your boss about that Tuesday afternoon you spent at your kid's football game. If the goal wasn't met, no amount of face time around the office would substitute for the lack of results. Of course, if your job description involved opening up the store at 9 a.m., fulfilment of that goal was a must. But for knowledge workers, measuring output became entirely divorced from hours logged in the office. The key difference under ROWE is that superiors are managing the work instead of managing the people. It forces clear thinking on what the expectations should be for delivering results. Thompson claims the effect on employees is remarkable. 'When you get to take over your own life and feel responsible for yourself and your work,' she says, 'you feel proud and liberated and dignified. It's the control, but it's also the clarity on top of it. I now need to know what my results are supposed to be so I can prove that I'm getting there.' Decades ago, it was useful to be physically present in the office as much as possible. That way, your boss knew how to find you when it was time to get a question answered or to work together on a project. Now, though, we have mobile phones and email and instant messenger and collaboration software. It's quite easy to get things done from different places and at different times. Chair-warming presenteeism isn't necessary. But what happens when we give ROWE a taste of its own medicine and judge it solely on its results, instead of its intentions? According to Phyllis Moen, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota, who has conducted a number of studies on the effects of ROWE on Best Buy employees, ROWE has had some surprisingly positive results, including better employee health, reduced turnover and improved morale. That all sounds great for the employees. But Ressler and Thompson claim the company benefited, as well. According to them, voluntary turnover rates went down as much as 90 percent on ROWE teams, while productivity on those teams increased by 41 percent. Thompson and Ressler have laid out their blueprint for ROWE in a book titled Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It.



What is the author's attitude towards ROWE?





  • He is a bit sceptical about it, as it is applicable in only some types of jobs.
  • He is in favour of it, and mentions none of its shortcomings.
  • He admires it, though he does question some aspects of it.
  • He is biased towards it, and only quotes positive views by ROWE’s developers and others.

0 voters

556

PJ-Arrange sentences A, B, C and D between sentences 1 and 6, so as to

form a logical sequence of six sentences.


1. Some of the maharajas, like the one at Kapurthala, had exquisite taste.

A. In 1902, the Maharaja of Kapurthala gave his civil engineer photographs of the Versailles Palace and asked him to replicate it, right down to the gargoyles.

B. Yeshwantrao Holkar of Indore brought in Bauhaus aesthetics and even works of modern artists like Brancusi and Duchamp.

C. Kitsch is the most polite way to describe them.

D. But many of them, as the available light photographs show, had execrable taste.

6. Like Ali Baba's caves, some of the palaces were like warehouses with the downright ugly next to the sublimely aesthetic.


557

 PJ-Arrange sentences A, B, C and D between sentences 1 and 6, so as to form a logical sequence of six sentences. 

1. A few years ago, hostility towards Japanese-Americans was so strong that I thought they were going to reopen the detention camps here in Kolkata.

A. Today Asians are a success story.

B. I cannot help making a comparison to the anti-Jewish sentiment in Nazi Germany when Jewish people were successful in business.

C. But do people applaud President Clinton for improving foreign trade with Asia?

D. Now, talk about the ‘Arkansas-Asia Connection’ is broadening that hatred to include all Asian- Americans.

6. No, blinded by jealousy, they complain that it is the Asian-Americans who are reaping the wealth.

558

 Can anyone please post aimcat 2015 pdfs?

Urgently needed.

Thank you! 

559

       As one who has always believed that truth is our nation’s surest weapon in the propaganda war against our foes, I am distressed by reports of “disinformation” campaigns by American intelligence agents in Western Europe. In a disinformation campaign, untruths are disseminated through gullible local journalists in order to damage the interests of our enemies and protect our own. Those who defend this practice say that lying is necessary to counter Soviet disinformation campaigns aimed at damaging America’s political interests. These apologists contend that one must fight fire with fire. I would point out to the apologists that the fire department finds water more effective. The author’s main point is that  

  • Although disinformation campaigns may be effective, they are unacceptable on ethical grounds
  • America’s moral standing in the world depends on its adherence to the truth
  • The temporary political gains produced by disinformation campaigns generally give way to long-term lossesSoviet disinformation campaigns have done little to damage America’s standing in Europe
  • Soviet disinformation campaigns have done little to damage America’s standing in Europe
  • disinformation campaigns do not effectively serve the political interests of the United States

0 voters

560

  With Proposition 13, if you bought your house 11 years ago for $75,000, your property tax would be approximately $914 a year (1 percent of $75,000 increased by 2 percent each year for 11 years); and if your neighbor bought an identical house next door to you for $200,000 this year, his tax would be $2,000 (1 percent of $200,000). Without Proposition 13, both you and your neighbor would pay $6,000 a year in property taxes (3 percent of $200,000).    Which of the following is the conclusion for which the author most likely is arguing in the passage above?  

  • By preventing inflation from driving up property values, Proposition 13 has saved homeowners thousands of dollars in property taxes.
  • If Proposition 13 is not repealed, identical properties will continue to be taxed at different rates.
  • Proposition 13 has benefited some homeowners more than others.
  • If Proposition 13 is repealed, every homeowner is likely to experience a substantial increase in property taxes.
  • Proposition 13 is unconstitutional because it imposes an unequal tax on properties of equal value.

0 voters