Critical Reasoning Previous Year Questions (CAT) - Set 0006
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Previous years`s CAT questions: Critical Reasoning
Post your solutions as reply to respective questions below.
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Question 1
Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the options.
A. To avoid this, the QWERTY layout put the keys most likely to be hit in rapid succession on opposite sides. This made the keyboard slow, the story goes, but that was the idea.
B. A different layout, which had been patented by August Dvorak in 1936, was shown to be much faster.
C. The QWERTY design (patented by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and sold to Remington in 1873) aimed to solve a mechanical problem of early typewriters.
D. Yet the Dvorak layout has never been widely adopted, even though (with electric typewriters and then PCs) the anti-jamming rationale for QWERTY has been defunct for years.
E. When certain combinations of keys were struck quickly, the type bars often jammed.Â
(CAT 2003 Leaked)
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(1) BDACE
(2) CEABD
(3) BCDEA
(4) CAEBD
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Answer: Option 2
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Question 2
Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the four given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.
A. Branded disposable diapers are available at many supermarkets and drug stores.
B. If one supermarket sets a higher price for a diaper, customers may buy that brand elsewhere.
C. By contrast, the demand for private-label products may be less price sensitive since it is available only at our corresponding supermarket chain.
D. So, the demand for branded diapers at any particular store may be quite price sensitive. For instance, only SavOn Drugs stores sell SavOn Drugs diapers.
E. Then, stores should set a higher incremental margin percentage for private-label diapers.(1) ABCDE
(2) ABCED
(3) ADBCE
(4) AEDBCÂ (CAT 2002)
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Answer: Option 3
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Question 3
Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the four given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.
A. Having a strategy is a matter of discipline.
B. It involves the configuration of a tailored value chain that enables a company to offer unique value.
C. It requires a strong focus on profitability and a willingness to make tough trade-offs in choosing what not to do.
D. Strategy goes far beyond the pursuit of best practices.
E. A company must stay the course even during times of upheaval, while constantly improving and extending its distinctive positioning.
F. When a company's activities fit together as a self-reinforcing system, any competitor wishing to imitate a strategy must replicate the whole system.(1) ACEDBF
(2) ACBDEF
(3) DCBEFA
(4) ABCEDF (CAT 2002)
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Answer: Option 1
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Question 4
Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the four given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.
A. As officials, their vision of a country shouldn't run too far beyond that of the local people with whom they have to deal.
B. Ambassadors have to choose their words.
C. To say what they feel they have to say, they appear to be denying or ignoring part of what they know.
D. So, with ambassadors as with other expatriates in black Africa, there appears at a first meeting a kind of ambivalence.
E. They do a specialized job and it is necessary for them to live ceremonial lives.(1) BCEDA
(2) BEDAC
(3) BEADC
(4) BCDEAÂ Â (CAT 2002)
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Answer: Option 3
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Question 5
Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the four given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.
A. “This face off will continue for several months given the strong convictions on either side,” says a senior functionary of the high-powered task force on drought.
B. During the past week-and-half, the Central Government has sought to deny some of the earlier apprehensions over the impact of drought.
C. The recent revival of the rains had led to the emergence of a line of divide between the two.
D. The state governments, on the other hand allege that the Centre is downplaying the crisis only to evade its full responsibility of financial assistance that is required to alleviate the damage.
E. Shrill alarm about the economic impact of an inadequate monsoon had been sounded by the Centre as well as most of the states, in late July and early August.(1) EBCDA
(2) DBACE
(3) BDCAE
(4) ECBDA (CAT 2002)
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Answer: Option 4
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Question 6
Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the four given choices to construct a coherent paragraph.
A. This fact was established in the 1730s by French survey expeditions to the Equator and to Lapland in the Arctic, which found that around the middle of the earth the arc was about a kilometer shorter.
B. One of the unsettled scientific questions in the late 18th century was the exact nature of the shape of the earth.
C. The length of one-degree arc would be less near the equatorial latitudes than at the poles.
D. One way of doing that is to determine the length of the arc along a chosen longitude or meridian
at one degree latitude separation.
E. While it was generally known that the earth was not a sphere but an 'oblate spheroid' more curved at the equator and flatter at the poles, the question of 'how much more' was yet to be established.(1) BECAD
(2) BEDCA
(3) BDACE
(4) EBDCAÂ Â (CAT 2002)
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Answer: Option 2
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Question 7
Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given options.
A. Although there are large regional variations, it is not infrequent to find a large number of people sitting here and there and doin nothing.
B. Once in office, they receive friends and relatives who feel free to call any time without prior appointment.
C. While working, one is struck by the slow and clumsy actions and reactions, indifferent attitudes, procedure rather than outcome orientation, and the lack of consideration for others.
D. Even those who are employed often come late to the office and leave early unless they are forced to be punctual.
E. Work is not intrinsically valued in India.
F. Quite often people visit ailing friends and relatives or go out of their way to help them in their personal matters even during office hours.(1) ECADBF
(2) EADCFB
(3) EADBFC
(4) ABFCBEÂ Â (CAT 2001)
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Answer: Option 1
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Question 8
Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given options.
A. But in the industrial era destroying the enemy’s productive capacity means bombing the factories which are located in the cities.
B. So in the agrarian era, if you need to destroy the enemy’s productive capacity, what you want to do is burn his fields, or if you’re really vicious, salt them.
C. Now in the information era, destroying the enemy’s productive capacity means destroying the information infrastructure.
D. How do you do battle with your enemy?
E. The idea is to destroy the enemy’s productivecapacity, and depending upon the economic foundation, that productive capacity is different in each case.
F. With regard to defence, the purpose of the military is to defend the nation and be prepared to do battle with its enemy.
(1) FDEBAC
(2) FCABED
(3) DEBACF
(4) DFEBAC (CAT 2001)
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Answer: Option 1
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Question 9
Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given options.
A. Michael Hofman, a poet and translator, accepts this sorry fact without approval or complaint.
B. But thanklessness and impossibility do not daunt him.
C. He acknowledges too in fact he returns to the point often that best translators of poetry always fail at some level.
D. Hofman feels passionately about his work, and this is clear from his writings.
E. In terms of the gap between worth and rewards, translators come somewhere near nurses and street cleaners.
(1) EACDB
(2) ADEBC
(3) EACBD
(4) DCEABÂ Â (CAT 2001)
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Answer: Option 3
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Question 10
Choose the most logical order of sentences from among the given options.
A. Passivity is not, of course, universal.
B. In areas where there are no lords or laws, or in frontier zones where all men go armed, the
attitude of the peasantry may well be different.C. So indeed it may be on the fringe of the unsubmissive.
D. However, for most of the soil-bound peasants the problem is not whether to be normally passive or active, but when to pass from one state to another.
E. This depends on an assessment of the political situation.
(1) BEDAC
(2) CDABE
(3) EDBAC
(4) ABCDEÂ (CAT 2001)
