Critical Reasoning Mixed Practice
Critical Reasoning Mixed Practice
Questions
World’s non-renewable energy resources are being drained much too fast. To rectify the situation, China – world’s largest importer of non-renewable energy resources – must maintain its energy resources usage at present levels for considerable time in future.
The argument above depends on which of the following assumptions?
- Per capita energy resource usage in China is at an all-time high.
- China wastes non-renewable energy resources.
- China consumes more non-renewable energy resources than any other country in the world.
- Controlling Chinese non-renewable energy resource consumption will significantly reduce world non-renewable energy resource drainage.
- China imports most of the non-renewable energy resources it consumes.
Researcher: Chocolates are healthy for teeth, despite what is commonly said. After all, most dentists do consume chocolate, and who knows more about dental health than dentists do?
Which one of the following is a flaw in the researcher’s reasoning?
- Attacking the challengers’ intentions than their reasoning
- Concluding on the basis of a set consisting of typical cases
- Assuming at the beginning what the argument claims to assert through rationalizing
- Appealing to authority, even when contrarian advice is proffered by different authorities
- Supposing that experts do not act against what, according to their expertise, is in their best interest
Recruitment agent: Job seekers do not possess as good writing skills as they used to. Almost all of the covering letters that I have got this year have been poorly written and ungrammatical.
Which one of the following is the most serious weakness in the argument made by the recruitment agent?
- It requires corroboration that the change in the agent’s prospects is illustrative of a similar change among job seekers in general.
- It offers no evidence of the fact that the recruitment agent is an accurate assessor of writing skills.
- It does not take into consideration the possibility that the agent is a poor recruiter.
- It fails to present any evidence to the contrary.
- It fails to define key terms employed clearly.
Lately, many highly skilled engineers from the IT industry in India have left their jobs in significant numbers to move to foreign shores. It is therefore quite likely that the competent IT professionals who remain in the industry in India are in high demand in their respective domains.
Which one of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?
- Indian IT industry prefers to hire engineers from within the country than to hire them from abroad.
- Major changes in the organizational structures in Indian IT industry have led to the elimination of many positions previously held by the highly skilled engineers.
- Many Indian IT engineers emigrating to foreign shores need to acquire new IT skills after finding work.
- Indian IT industry plans to train many new workers to replace the skilled IT professionals who have emigrated.
- Because of the departure of skilled engineers from Indian IT industry, many positions in the industry are now vacant.
In the beginning of the twentieth century, Georges Lemaître proposed what finally came to be known as the Big Bang theory. His ideas were vehemently opposed because he could propose no reason good enough to explain the expansion of the universe. We have come to accept the Big Bang theory, not because we have determined such a reason, but because new experiments and instruments have allowed us to confirm the expansion of the universe by observation.
The passage best illustrates which one of the following statements about science?
- The objective of science is to outline the various aspects of nature with the help of a single unified theory.
- In providing a mathematically precise account of nature, science has become quite accurate at identifying underlying reasons.
- The irony of the scientific method is that every improvement in its measuring techniques seems to make acceptable theories more difficult to work out.
- Science, using various tools of mathematical analysis, is not focused on any single outcome but a detailed and complete model.
- When some events predicted by a theory are discovered, the theory is affirmed even without a precise explanation of the reason behind the event.
Head of the Customer Relations Department: I have received over 10,000 instances of feedback on this issue from our customers and the most of them like our current color-scheme. These communications prove that most of our customers are not in favor of a change in our current color scheme.
Which of the following, if true, most weakens the conclusion being arrived at by the head of the Customer Relations Department?
- The issue is very contentious and many in the top management have very strong opinions on it.
- Some managers from Head’s own department do not like the current color-scheme.
- Customers who do not like the current color-scheme are more vocal than the customers who like the scheme.
- Customers who like the current color-scheme are more likely to give feedback to the Head than customers who do not like the scheme.
- During the trial phase of the current color-scheme, the Head himself was not completely satisfied with the current color-scheme.
Last year, all the candidates who sought employment at ‘Clean n Green’ also applied for a position at ‘Mellow n Yellow’, and ‘Clean n Green’ and ‘Mellow n Yellow’ each offered suitable positions to half of these candidates. Therefore, each one of these candidates must have been offered a suitable position last year.
The argument above is based on which of the following assumptions about these candidates?
- All the candidates were eminently qualified for a suitable position at either ‘Clean n Green’ or ‘Mellow n Yellow’.
- All the candidates accepted a position offered at either ‘Clean n Green’ or ‘Mellow n Yellow’.
- None of the candidates was offered a suitable position by both ‘Clean n Green’ and ‘Mellow n Yellow’ simultaneously.
- None of the candidates had applied for suitable positions at places other than ‘Clean n Green’ and ‘Mellow n Yellow’.
Even though the summer is almost here, the prices of vegetables for retail consumers are quite low this year and likely to stay low. Therefore, unless the summer is especially harsh, the price of pulses for retail consumers is also likely to remain low.
Which of the following, if true, provides the most support for the conclusion above?
- A number of weather forecasters predict a mild summer.
- The retail consumers who consume pulses the most can quickly and cheaply switch to using vegetables instead.
- The sources of supply for both vegetables and pulses are unlikely to be affected by summer weather.
- The total consumption of pulses by retail consumers is not seriously affected by the weather.
- Vegetable supplies are more likely to be affected by a harsh summer than pulse supplies.
Compulsory regulatory audits have revealed that PhoneTel, a mobile services provider, has erred in generating the bills it presents to its customers. But PhoneTel’s chairman asserted that the profits of his company would not be affected by a revision of its customers’ billing statements, since just as many customers had been overcharged as undercharged.
Which of the following is a reasoning error that the chairman makes in concluding that correcting the customers’ billing statements would leave Phone Tel’s profits unaffected?
- Depending on the standing of Phone Tel as a trusted name in the mobile services domain to retain the company’s customers after its billing error becomes widely known.
- Inability to establish that Phone Ttel imposes on all its customers the same charges for similar services.
- Ignoring the chance that the amount by which Phone Tel’s customers had been overcharged might be greater than the amount by which they had been undercharged.
- Hoping that the customers who had been overcharged by Phone Tel had not noticed the error in their billing statements.
- Assuming that each one of Phone Tel’s customers had either been overcharged or undercharged in the billing error.
If the coal mining companies in India are slower to adopt new mining technology than their foreign counterparts are, their mining costs will fall more slowly than their foreign counterparts’ costs will. But if their mining costs fall less rapidly than their foreign counterparts’ costs do, they will not be able to lower their prices as rapidly as their foreign counterparts can; and when a country’s mining companies cannot lower their prices as rapidly as their foreign counterparts can, that country gets pushed out of the global supply market.
If the statements above are true, which one of the following must also be true on the basis of them?
- If the mining companies in one country raise their prices, it is because they have pushed their foreign counterparts out of the global market.
- If mining companies in one country have been pushed out of the global market, this shows that their foreign counterparts have adopted new technologies more rapidly than they have.
- If a country’s foreign rivals can lower their mining costs more rapidly than the country’s own mining companies can, then their foreign rivals must have adopted new mining technologies.
- If a country’s mining companies adopt new technologies at the same rate as their foreign counterparts, neither group will be able to push the other out of the global market.
- If a country’s mining companies can lower their mining costs as rapidly as their foreign counterparts can, this shows that they adopt new technology at least as fast as their foreign counterparts do.