Free Verbal Reasoning - 09 Practice Test - CAT 

I am sometimes attacked for imposing 'rules'. Nothing could be further from the truth. I hate rules. All I do is report on how consumers react to different stimuli. I may say to a copywriter, "Research shows that commercials with celebrities are below average in persuading people to buy products. Are you sure you want to use a celebrity"? Call that a rule? Or I may say to an art director, "Research suggests that if you set the copy in black type on a white background, more people will read it than if you set it in white type on a black background."__________

Age has a curvilinear relationship with the exploitation of opportunity. Initially, age will increase   the likelihood that a person will exploit an entrepreneurial opportunity because people gather   much of the knowledge necessary to exploit opportunities over   the course of their lives,   and   because   age   provides credibility   in transmitting   that information   to others.   However, as people become older, their willingness to bear risks declines, their opportunity costs rise, and they become less receptive to new information._______________________________

Thus the end of knowledge and the closing of the frontier that it symbolizes is not a looming crisis at all, but merely one of many embarrassing fits of hubris in civilization's long industry. In the end, it will pass away and be forgotten. Ours is not the first generation to struggle to understand the organizational laws of the frontier, deceive itself that it has succeeded, and go to its grave having failed._____

Most firms consider expert individuals to be too elitist, temperamental, egocentric, and difficult to work with. Force such people to collaborate on a high-stakes project and they just might come to fisticuffs. Even the very notion of managing such a group seems unimaginable. So most organizations fall into default mode, setting up project teams of people who get along nicely._____

(1) Given   the   poor   quality   of   service   in   the   public   sector,   the   HIV/AIDS   affected   should   be   switching   to private initiatives that supply anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) at a low cost.

(2) The government has been supplying free drugs since 2004, and 35000 have benefited up to now - though the size of the affected population is 150 times this number.

(3) The recent initiatives of networks and companies like AIDS Care Network, Emcure, Reliance-Cipla-CII, would lead to availability of much-needed drugs to a larger number of affected people.

(4) But   how ironic   it is   that   we should face a   perennial   shortage   of   drugs   when India   is   one of   the world's largest suppliers of generic drugs to the developing world

1.Inequitable distribution of all kinds of resources is certainly one of the strongest and most sinister sources of conflict.  

2.Even without war, we know that conflicts continue to trouble us - they only change in character

3.Extensive disarmament is the only insurance for our future; imagine the amount of resources that can be released and redeployed. 4.   The economies of the industrialized western world derive 20% of their income from the sale of all kinds of arms

1. We should not be hopelessly addicted to an erroneous belief that corruption in India is caused by the crookedness of Indians.

2. The truth is that we have more red tape - we take eighty-nine days to start a small business, Australians take two.

3. Red tape leads to corruption and distorts a person's character.

4. Every red tape procedure is a point of contact with an official, and such  

contacts have the potential to become opportunities for money to change hands

(1) So much of our day-to-day focus seems to be on getting things done, trudging our way through the tasks of living - it can feel like a treadmill that gets you nowhere; where is the childlike joy?

(2) We are not doing the things that make us happy; that which brings us joy; the things that we cannot wait to do because we enjoy them so much.

(3) This is the stuff that joyful living is made of - identifying your calling and committing yourself whole heartedly to it.

(4) When this happens, each moment becomes a celebration of you; there is a rush of energy that comes with feeling completely immersed in doing what you love most

(1) According to all statistical indications, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan has managed to keep pace with its ambitious goals.

(2) The Mid-day Meal Scheme has been a significant incentive for the poor to send their little ones to school, thus establishing the vital link between healthy bodies and healthy minds.

(3) Only about 13 million children in the age group of 6 to 14 years are out of school.

(4) The goal of universalization of elementary education has to be a pre-requisite for the evolution and development of our country

1. Despite the passage of time, a large number of conflicts continue to remain alive, because the wronged parties, in reality or in their imagination, wish to take revenge upon each other, thus creating a vicious circle.
A.   At times, managers are called upon to take ruthless decisions in the long-term interests of the organization.
B.   People hurt others, at times knowingly, to teach them a lesson and, at other times, because they lack correct understanding of the other person have stand.
C.   The delegation of any power, to any person, is never absolute.
D.   Every ruthless decision will be easier to accept if the situation at the moment of committing the act is objectively analysed, shared openly and discussed rationally.
6.   If power is misused, its effects can last only for a while, since employees are bound to confront it someday, more so, the talented ones

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 California.
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.

 

The audiences for crosswords and Sudoku, understandably, overlap greatly, but there are differences, too. A crossword attracts a more literary person, while Sudoku appeals to a keenly logical mind. Some crossword enthusiasts turn up their noses at Sudoku because they feel it lacks depth. A good crossword requires vocabulary, knowledge, mental flexibility and sometimes even a sense of humor to complete. It touches numerous areas of life and provides an "Aha!" or two along the way._____

Federer's fifth grand slam win prompted a reporter to ask whether he was the best ever. Federer is certainly not lacking in confidence, but he wasn't about to proclaim himself the best ever. "The best player of this generation, yes", he said, "But nowhere close to ever. Just look at the records that some guys have. I'm a minnow."_____

You seemed at first to take no notice of your school-fellows, or rather to set yourself against them because they were strangers to you. They knew as little of you as you did of them; this would have been the reason for their keeping aloof from you as well, which you would have felt as a hardship. Learn never to conceive a prejudice against others because you know nothing of them. It is bad reasoning, and makes enemies of half the world. Do not think ill of them till they behave ill to you; and then strive to avoid the faults which you see in them. This will disarm their hostility sooner than pique or resentment or complaint

The human race is spread all over the world, from the polar regions to the tropics. The people of whom it is made up eat different kinds of food, partly according to the climate in which they live, and partly according to the kind of food which their country produces. In hot climates, meat and fat are not much needed; but in the Arctic regions they seem to be very necessary for keeping up the heat of the body. Thus, in India, people live chiefly on different kinds of grains, eggs, milk, or sometimes fish and meat. In Europe, people eat more meat and less grain. In the Arctic regions, where no grains and fruits are produced, the Eskimo and other races live almost entirely on meat and fish

Although almost all climate scientists agree that the Earth is gradually warming, they have long been of two minds about the process of rapid climate shifts within larger periods of change. Some have speculated that the process works like a giant oven freezer, warming or cooling the whole planet at the same time. Others think that shifts occur on opposing schedules in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, like exaggerated seasons. Recent research in Germany examining climate patterns in the Southern Hemisphere at the end of the last Ice Age strengthens the idea that warming and cooling occurs at alternate times in the two hemispheres. A more definitive answer to this debate will allow scientists to better predict when and how quickly the next climate shift will happen

Local communities have often come in conflict with agents trying to exploit

Resources, at a faster pace, for an expanding commercial-industrial economy. More often than not, such agents of resource-intensification are given preferential treatment by the state, through the grant of generous long leases over mineral or fish stocks, for example, or the provision of raw material at an enormously subsidized price. With the injustice so compounded, local communities at the receiving end of this process have no resource expert direct action, resisting both the state and outside exploiters through a variety of protest techniques. These struggles might perhaps be seen as a manifestation of a new kind of class conflict

Modem bourgeois society, said Nietzsche, was decadent and enfeebled "” a victim of the excessive development of the rational faculties at the expense of will and instinct.   Against the liberal-rationalist stress on the intellect, Nietzsche urged recognition of the dark mysterious world of instinctual desires "” the true forces of life. Smother the will with excessive intellectualizing and you destroy the spontaneity that sparks cultural creativity and ignites a zest for living. The critical and theoretical outlook destroyed the creative instincts. For man's manifold potential to be realized, he must forego relying on the intellect and nurture again the instinctual roots of human existence