CAT 2024 Slot 2 Question Paper

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: Science has officially crowned us superior to our early-rising brethren.

Paragraph: My fellow night owls, grab a strong cup of coffee and gather around: I have great news. ___(1)___. For a long time, our kind has been unfairly maligned. Stereotyped as lazy and undisciplined. Told we ought to be morning larks. Advised to go to bed early so we can wake before 5am and run a marathon before breakfast like all high-flyers seem to do. Now, however, we are having the last laugh. ___(2)___. It may be a tad more complicated than that. A study published last week, which you may have already seen while scrolling at 1am, suggests that staying up late could be good for brain power. ___(3)___. Is this study a thinly veiled PR exercise conducted by a caffeine-pill company? Nope, it’s legit. ___(4)___. Research led by academics at Imperial College London studied data on more than 26,000 people and found that “self-declared ‘night owls’ generally tend to have higher cognitive scores”.

Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.

1. No known real researcher of human behaviour would say that gender is all nature or all nurture.
2. The evidence for a biological basis for gender certainly doesn’t mean we should be complacent in the face of sexism.
3. Many people are uncomfortable with the idea that gender is not purely a social construct.
4. Despite this empirical truth, researchers who study the biological basis of gender often face political pushback.
5. There’s a political preference for gender to be only a reflection of social factors and so entirely malleable.

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: [T]he Europeans did not invent globalization.

Paragraph: The first phase of globalization occurred long before the introduction of either steam or electric power…Chinese consumers at all social levels consumed vast quantities of spices, fragrant woods and unusual plants. The peoples of Southeast Asia who lived in forests gave up their traditional livelihoods and completely reoriented their economies to supply Chinese consumers….___(1)___. These exchanges of the year 1000 opened some of the routes through which goods and peoples continued to travel after Columbus traversed the mid- Atlantic. ___(2)___. Yet the world of 1000 differed from that of 1492 in important ways….the travellers who encountered one another in the year 1000 were much closer technologically. ___(3)___. They changed and augmented what was already there since 1000. ___(4)___. If globalization hadn’t yet begun, Europeans wouldn’t have been able to penetrate the markets in so many places as quickly as they did after 1492.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

Different from individuals, states conduct warfare operations using the DIME model— “diplomacy, information, military, and economics.” Most states do everything they can to inflict pain and confusion on their enemies before deploying the military. In fact, attacks on vectors of information are a well-worn tactic of war and usually are the first target when the charge begins. It’s common for telecom data and communications networks to be routinely monitored by governments, which is why the open data policies of the web are so concerning to many advocates of privacy and human rights. With the worldwide adoption of social media, more governments are getting involved in low-grade information warfare through the use of cyber troops. According to a study by the Oxford Internet Institute in 2020, cyber troops are “government or political party actors tasked with manipulating public opinion online.” The Oxford research group was able to identify 81 countries with active cyber troop operations, utilizing many different strategies to spread false information, including spending millions on online advertising.

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

John Cleese told Fox News Digital that comedians do not have the freedom to be funny in 2022. “There’s always been limitations on what they’re allowed to say,” Cleese said. “I think it’s particularly worrying at the moment because you can only create in an atmosphere of freedom, where you’re not checking everything you say critically before you move on. What you have to be able to do is to build without knowing where you’re going because you’ve never been there before. That’s what creativity is — you have to be allowed to build. And a lot of comedians now are sitting there and when they think of something, they say something like, ‘Can I get away with it? I don’t think so. So and so got into trouble, and he said that, oh, she said that.’ You see what I mean? And that’s the death of creativity.”

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: Yet each day the flock produced eggs with calcareous shells though they apparently had not ingested any calcium from land which was entirely lacking in limestone.

Paragraph: Early in this century a young Breton schoolboy who preparing himself for a scientific career began to notice a strange fact about hens in his father's poultry yard. ___(1) ___. As they scratched the soil they constantly seemed to be pecking at specks of mica, a siliceous material dotting the ground. ___(2)___. No one could explain to Louis Kervran why the chickens selected the mica, or why each time a bird was killed for the family cooking pot no trace of the mica could be found in its gizzard. ___(3) ___. It took Kervran many years to establish that the chickens were transmuting one element into another. ___(4)___.

The author lists all of the following examples as “externalities” of major technical advances EXCEPT:

Which of the following best conveys the main point of the first paragraph?

Carrier, Babbage, and Edison are mentioned in the passage to illustrate the author’s point that

We can assume that the author would support all of the following views EXCEPT:

The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

Recent important scientific findings have emerged from crossing the boundaries of scientific fields. They stem from physicists collaborating with biologists, sociologists and others, to answer questions about our world. But physicists and their potential collaborators often find their cultures out of sync. For one, physicists often discard a lot of information while extracting broad patterns; for other scientists, information is not readily disposed. Further, many non-physicists are uncomfortable with mathematical models. Still, the desire to work on something new and different is real, and there are clear benefits from the collision of views.

Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.

1. The UK is a world leader in developing cultivated meat and the approval of a cultivated pet food is an important milestone.
2. If we’re to realise the full potential benefits of cultivated meat the government must invest in research and infrastructure.
3. The first UK applications for cultivated meat produced for humans remain under assessment with the Food Standards Agency.
4. The previous UK government had been looking at fast-tracking the approval of cultivated meat for human consumption.
5. It underscores the potential for new innovation to help reduce the negative impacts of intensive animal agriculture.

According to the passage, which of the following is the only reason NOT given in favour of making peer review data public?

All of the following are listed as reasons why academics choose to review other scholars’ work EXCEPT:

Based on the passage we can infer that the author would most probably support

According to the passage, some are opposed to making peer reviews public for all the following reasons EXCEPT that it

It can be inferred that all of the following contributed to a decline in the allure of spices, EXCEPT:

In the context of the passage, the people who heard the story of pepper trees being guarded by snakes would be least likely to arrive at the conclusion that

In the context of the passage, which one of the following conclusions CANNOT be reached?

If a trader brought white peppercorns from India to medieval Europe, all of the following are unlikely to happen, EXCEPT:

According to the passage, what is a significant factor that contributes to the habituation of carnivores to human presence?

Given the insights provided by Penteriani’s research and Wilkinson’s statement, which of the following conclusions can be drawn about the relationship between landscape heterogeneity and human-carnivore conflicts?

Which of the following statements, if false, would be inconsistent with the concerns raised in the passage regarding the drivers of carnivore-human conflicts?

According to the passage, which of the following scenarios would MOST likely exacerbate the frequency of carnivore-human conflicts?

What is the row number which has the least sum of numbers placed in that row?

Which of the following statements MUST be true?
I. 10 is placed in a slot in Row 1.
II. 1 is placed in a slot in Row 4.

Which of the following statements MUST be true?
I. 2 is placed in a slot in Column 2.
II. 3 is placed in a slot in Column 3.

For how many slots in the grid, placement of numbers CANNOT be determined with certainty?

What is the sum of the numbers placed in Column 4?

One resident whose house is located at L, needs to visit the post office as well as the bank. What is the minimum distance (in m) he has to walk starting from his residence and returning to his residence after visiting both the post office and the bank?

One person enters the gated area and decides to walk as much as possible before leaving the area without walking along any path more than once and always walking next to one of the lakes. Note that he may cross a point multiple times. How much distance (in m) will he walk within the gated area?

One resident takes a walk within the gated area starting from A and returning to A without going through any point (other than A) more than once. What is the maximum distance (in m) she can walk in this way?

Visitors coming for morning walks are allowed to enter as long as they do not pass by any of the residences and do not cross any point (except C) more than once. What is the maximum distance (in m) that such a visitor can walk within the gated area?

How many buyers gave ratings on Day 1?

What is the daily average rating of Day 3?

What is the median of all ratings given on Day 3?

Which of the following is true about the cumulative average ratings of Day 2 and Day 3?

Assume that the annual rate of growth in PAT over the previous year (ARG) remained constant over the years for each of the six firms. Which among the firms A, B, C, and E had the highest ARG?

The ratio of the amount of money spent by Firm C on R&D in 2019 to that in 2023 is closest to

Which among the firms A, C, E, and F had the maximum PAT per employee in 2023?

Which among the firms C, D, E, and F had the least amount of R&D spending per employee in 2023?

What best can be concluded about the number of players coached by Zara?

What was the rating of Player-7?

What was the rating of Player-6?

For how many players the ratings can be determined with certainty?

Who all were the players trained by Xena?

Bina incurs 19% loss when she sells a product at Rs. 4860 to Shyam, who in turn sells this product to Hari. If Bina would have sold this product to Shyam at the purchase price of Hari, she would have obtained 17% profit. Then, the profit, in rupees, made by Shyam is

The coordinates of the three vertices of a triangle are: (1, 2), (7, 2), and (1, 10). Then the radius of the incircle of the triangle is

A fruit seller has a stock of mangoes, bananas and apples with at least one fruit of each type. At the beginning of a day, the number of mangoes make up 40% of his stock. That day, he sells half of the mangoes, 96 bananas and 40% of the apples. At the end of the day, he ends up selling 50% of the fruits. The smallest possible total number of fruits in the stock at the beginning of the day is

If a, b and c are positive real numbers such that a > 10 \geq b \geq c and $\cfrac{\log_8 (a + b)}{\log_2c} + \cfrac{\log_{27} (a - b)}{\log_3c} = \cfrac{2}{3}$, then the greatest possible integer value of a is

A function f maps the set of natural numbers to whole numbers, such that f(xy) = f(x)f(y) + f(x) + f(y) for all x, y and f(p) = 1 for every prime number p. Then, the value of f(160000) is

The roots $\alpha, \beta$ of the equation $3x^2 + \lambda x - 1 = 0$, satisfy $\cfrac{1}{\alpha^2} + \cfrac{1}{\beta^2} = 15$.
The value of $(\alpha^3 + \beta^3)^2$, is

When Rajesh's age was same as the present age of Garima, the ratio of their ages was 3 : 2. When Garima's age becomes the same as the present age of Rajesh, the ratio of the ages of Rajesh and Garima will become

Three circles of equal radii touch (but not cross) each other externally. Two other circles, X and Y, are drawn such that both touch (but not cross) each of the three previous circles. If the radius of X is more than that of Y, the ratio of the radii of X and Y is

ABCD is a trapezium in which AB is parallel to CD. The sides AD and BC when extended, intersect at point E. If AB = 2 cm, CD = 1 cm, and perimeter of ABCD is 6 cm, then the perimeter, in cm, of $\triangle AEB$ is

A company has 40 employees whose names are listed in a certain order. In the year 2022, the average bonus of the first 30 employees was Rs. 40000, of the last 30 employees was Rs. 60000, and of the first 10 and last 10 employees together was Rs. 50000. Next year, the average bonus of the first 10 employees increased by 100%, of the last 10 employees increased by 200% and of the remaining employees was unchanged. Then, the average bonus, in rupees, of all the 40 employees together in the year 2023 was

Amal and Vimal together can complete a task in 150 days, while Vimal and Sunil together can complete the same task in 100 days. Amal starts working on the task and works for 75 days, then Vimal takes over and works for 135 days. Finally, Sunil takes over and completes the remaining task in 45 days. If Amal had started the task alone and worked on all days, Vimal had worked on every second day, and Sunil had worked on every third day, then the number of days required to complete the task would have been

All the values of x satisfying the inequality $\cfrac{1}{x + 5} \leq \cfrac{1}{2x - 3}$ are

Anil invests Rs 22000 for 6 years in a scheme with 4% interest per annum, compounded half-yearly. Separately, Sunil invests a certain amount in the same scheme for 5 years, and then reinvests the entire amount he receives at the end of 5 years, for one year at 10% simple interest. If the amounts received by both at the end of 6 years are equal, then the initial investment, in rupees, made by Sunil is

A bus starts at 9 am and follows a fixed route every day. One day, it traveled at a constant speed of 60 km per hour and reached its destination 3.5 hours later than its scheduled arrival time. Next day, it traveled two-thirds of its route in one-third of its total scheduled travel time, and the remaining part of the route at 40 km per hour to reach just on time. The scheduled arrival time of the bus is

If $m$ and $n$ are natural numbers such that n > 1, and $m^n = 2^{25} \times 3^{40}$, then $m - n$ equals

When $3^{333}$ is divided by 11, the remainder is

If x and y are real numbers such that $4x^2 + 4y^2 - 4xy - 6y + 3 = 0$, then the value of $(4x + 5y)$ is

If $(x + 6\sqrt{2})^{\cfrac{1}{2}} - (x - 6\sqrt{2})^{\cfrac{1}{2}} = 2\sqrt{2}$, then x equals

P, Q, R and S are four towns. One can travel between P and Q along 3 direct paths, between Q and S along 4 direct paths, and between P and R along 4 direct paths. There is no direct path between P and S, while there are few direct paths between Q and R, and between R and S. One can travel from P to S either via Q, or via R, or via Q followed by R, respectively, in exactly 62 possible ways. One can also travel from Q to R either directly, or via P, or via S, in exactly 27 possible ways. Then, the number of direct paths between Q and R is

If x and y satisfy the equations $\mid x \mid + x + y = 15$ and $x + \mid y \mid - y = 20$, then $(x - y)$ equals

A vessel contained a certain amount of a solution of acid and water. When 2 litres of water was added to it, the new solution had 50% acid concentration. When 15 litres of acid was further added to this new solution, the final solution had 80% acid concentration. The ratio of water and acid in the original solution was

The sum of the infinite series $\cfrac{1}{5}\left(\cfrac{1}{5} - \cfrac{1}{7}\right) + \left(\cfrac{1}{5}\right)^2 \left(\left(\cfrac{1}{5}\right)^2 - \left(\cfrac{1}{7}\right)^2\right) + \left(\cfrac{1}{5}\right)^3 \left(\left(\cfrac{1}{5}\right)^3 - \left(\cfrac{1}{7}\right)^3\right) + ......$ is equal to