Critical Reasoning Mixed Practice - II
Critical Reasoning Mixed Practice - II
Questions
At the end of the year, Besahara Parivar rewards its top performers with cash prizes. When told the fact that the number of top performers receiving these prizes has declined markedly over the past ten years, the Chairman of the company Sarvadhik Besahara responded, “In that case, since our reward criterion at present is inclusion in the top ten percent of our employees, we can also say that the number of employees passed over for these prizes has similarly declined.”
Which one of the following is an assumption that would allow Sarvadhik Besahara’s conclusion to be properly drawn?
- Policies at Besahara Parivar with regard to hiring employees have not become more lax over the past ten years.
- The number of employees at Besahara Parivar has increased over the past ten years.
- The criterion used by Besahara Parivar for selecting its prize recipients has remained the same for the past ten years.
- The average total productivity figures for Besahara Parivar employees have been declining for the past ten years.
- Besahara Parivar calculates its employee’s productivity in the same way as it did ten years ago.
Studies show that forty percent of all students aged seventeen to twenty-five are residing outside their home districts in any given month. On the basis of these studies, a researcher concluded that sixty percent of all students aged seventeen to twenty-five are residents of their home districts year-round.
Which of the following, if true, would most seriously weaken the researcher’s conclusion?
- More students are residing outside their home districts today than during any other period since the nineteen fifties.
- Many students, both males and females, change their residential status frequently.
- Although only a small sample of the total student population is surveyed each month, these samples have been found to be a reliable indicator of monthly student residential status.
- Surveys show that more students than ever before consider moving out of their home districts for education, which is an important priority.
- Students who are residing outside their home districts have more independence than those students residing in their home districts.
Noplasticland uses its limited foreign-exchange resources to buy plastic chips abroad for recycling into plastic products. Although the products thus manufactured earn more foreign exchange than the cost of buying the chips, that course is ill-advised. Noplasticland’s own territory has vast petroleum reserves, which can be extracted without spending almost any foreign exchange.
Which of the following, if true, provides the strongest support for Noplasticland’s policy of buying plastic chips abroad?
- The price of plastic chips on international markets rose significantly in 2003.
- Noplasticland’s foreign-exchange resources dropped significantly in 2003.
- There is virtually no difference in quality between the plastic products manufactured from plastic chips and those manufactured from plastic obtained by extracting petroleum.
- Plastic chips are used in manufacturing roughly half the plastic products in the world today, and experts predict that plastic chips will be used even more extensively in the future.
- Facilities that process plastic chips can be built and operated in Noplasticland with substantially less foreign exchange expenditure than can provide facilities to process plastic obtained by extracting petroleum.
Smith asserted that property held-in-common that is, usable by every co-owner, would always be used less carefully than private property. Each owner would be inclined to overuse the property held-in-common because the gains would come to the individual alone, while the costs of maintenance that result from overuse would be spread among all co-owners. But a survey comparing 800 properties held-in-common with 1590 private properties showed that the properties held-in-common were in a better condition.
The answer to which of the following questions would be most useful in evaluating the significance, in relation to Smith’s claim, of the survey described above?
- Did any of the owners whose property was surveyed use both properties held-in-common and private properties?
- Did the owners whose property was surveyed tend to prefer using property held-in-common over using private property?
- Were the private properties that were surveyed of comparable quality to the properties held-in-common before either was put to use?
- Were the users of the properties held-in-common that were surveyed atleast as prosperous as the users of the private properties?
- Were there any co-owners of properties who used only properties held-in-common, and no private property?
An administrative decree requiring schools in rural areas to offer students leave of absence to help share their family’s burden of intensive farming work will harm the educational competitiveness of our nation’s rural students. Schools must be free to set their own leave & vacation policies without mandated leave of absence regulations.
Which of the following, if true, would most seriously weaken the conclusion of the argument above?
- The leave of absence decree will serve to strengthen the family as a social institution in this country.
- Many rural schools in this country already offer students some form of leave of absence.
- Some of the countries with the most educationally competitive students have strong leave of absence regulations.
- Only rural schools with one hundred or more students would be subject to the proposed leave of absence decree.
- In most surveys, a majority of rural students say they favour passage of a leave of absence decree.
Are you still drinking Outoftown milk? Do you know that the Outoftown milk brand cannot offer you fresh, locally sourced milk as it is based in a city outside the state? Drink Fromthetown, the only fresh, locally sourced milk brand of your own city!
Which of the following most directly refutes the argument raised in the advertisement above?
- Over half of the milk sales of Fromthetown come from customers located outside the city.
- Fromthetown usually sources more of its milk from outside the city than does Outoftown.
- Nearly forty percent of the customers of Outoftown reside outside the limits of the city.
- The Chief Manager and all the other members of the managerial staff of Outoftown have lived and worked in the city for ten years or more.
- Outoftown has been selling milk in the city for a longer time than Fromthetown.
Directions: Smith asserted that property held-in-common that is, usable by every co-owner, would always be used less carefully than private property. Each owner would be inclined to overuse the property held-in-common because the gains would come to the individual alone, while the costs of maintenance that result from overuse would be spread among all co-owners. But a survey comparing 800 properties held-in-common with 1590 private properties showed that the properties held-in-common were in a better condition.
Which of the following, if true, and known by the owners of properties, would best help explain the results of the survey?
- With private properties, both the costs and the benefits of overuse fall to the individual owner.
- The cost of maintenance that is allocated to any individual co-owner is less easily measured with property held-in-common than it is with private property.
- An individual co-owner who overuses property held-in-common might be able to achieve higher returns than other co-owners can, with the result that he or she would obtain a competitive advantage.
- If one co-owner of property held-in-common overuses it even slightly, the other co-owners are likely to do so even more, with the consequence that the maintenance costs to each co-owner outweigh the benefits.
- There are a larger number of private properties than there are properties held-in-common.
According to the existing property tax law, if you had purchased your property 14 years ago for INR 5,00,000 your tax would be INR 12,100 a year (2 percent of INR 5,00,000 increased by 10 percent every five years); and if someone else purchased a similar property in your neighborhood for INR 30,00,000 this year, his tax would be INR 60, 000 (2 percent of INR 30,00,000). Without the existing property tax law, both you and your neighbor would pay INR 1,50, 000 a year in property taxes (5 percent of INR 30,00,000).
Which of the following is the conclusion for which the author most likely is arguing in the passage above?
- Existing property tax law is unconstitutional because it charges an unequal property tax on properties of equal value.
- If existing property tax law is repealed, every property owner is likely to experience a significant hike in property taxes.
- By not linking property taxes with market value of the property, existing property tax law has saved property owners huge sums of money in property taxes.
- If existing property tax law is not repealed, properties with similar market value will continue to be taxed at different rates.
- Existing property tax law has benefited some property owners more than others.
Any serious strategy deliberation about tolerable levels of risk in connection with radiation leakage is not well served if the participants fail to use the words “radiation leakage” and use the phrase “undesirable exposure” instead. In fact, the words “radiation leakage” elicit desirable responses, such as a raised level of alertness, whereas the substitute phrase does not. Therefore, of the two terms, “radiation leakage” is the one that should be used throughout deliberations of this sort.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument above depends?
- In the kind of deliberations at issue, the advantages of desirable responses to the term “radiation leakage” outweigh the drawbacks, if any, arising from undesirable responses to that term.
- The phrase “undesirable exposure” has not so far been used as a substitute for the word “radiation leakage” in the kind of discussion at issue.
- In any serious strategy deliberation, what is said by the participants is more important than how it is put into words.
- The only reason that people are using “undesirable exposure” in place of “radiation leakage” is to render any impossible serious policy discussion concerning leakages.
- The phrase “undesirable exposure” is not necessarily out of place in describing a controlled rather than an accidental leakage.
Mining companies in Marsland can sell mineral Hydranite in Venusland at a price that is below the cost to Venusland mining companies of quarrying it. To help those Venusland mining companies, the Venusland administration plans to set a minimum selling price in Venusland for Hydranite mined in Marsland that is twenty percent greater than the average quarrying cost for mining companies in Venusland.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously threatens the success of the plan?
- Emerging mining companies from places other than Marsland will still be able to sell Hydranite in Venusland at a price below the cost to Venusland mining companies to quarry it.
- Venusland is not the only country where mining companies of Marsland currently sell Hydranite.
- Some Venusland mining companies that sell Hydranite have announced that they plan to decrease their price for Hydranite.
- The administration of Marsland will also set a minimum price for selling Hydranite in that country.
- The annual rate of inflation in Marsland is expected to exceed twenty percent within the next year.
Raghavan: I don’t believe Narendra will win the election for Prime Minister. Few voters are willing to elect a politician with no national experience to such a responsible position.
Rajni: You’re wrong. The experience of running a state government is a valuable preparation for the task of running a national government.
Rajni’s response shows that she has interpreted Raghavan’s remark to imply which of the following?
- Raghavan considers Narendra inexperienced for the position of Prime Minister.
- No candidate without national level political experience has ever been elected Prime Minister of the country.
- Raghavan believes that political leadership at the state level and political leadership at the national level are closely analogous.
- A career spent in the state politics can be an impediment to one’s ability to run a national government fairly.
- Voters generally overestimate the value of national political experience when selecting a candidate for national level position.