Know the CATs:Algebra
Here's the Algebra presentation that we had shared with you during the "Know the CATs" 7am classes.
Feel free to call any of the faculty (Nitin, Kapil or myself) to recollect any answers, if you forgot them!
Know the CATs: Number Systems
Here's the "Number Systems" presentation that we shared with you during the 7-10 am classes. Though only the questions are produced here, I am sure you will be able to recollect all the methods that we had discussed.
Feel free to call me or Kapil or Nitin, if you need any assistance. All the best!
XIM, Bhubaneshwar
Last date for applying online to XIMB is December 10, 2007.
Visit www.ximb.ac.in and register online for admission to XIMB. There are no paper-based application forms for seeking admission to XIMB. The application fee (Rs.1000/- for each programme) may be paid after filling the online application, as instructed there in.
Indian Institute of Foreign Management
Sale of IIFM application forms starts: 20.08.2007
Submission of completed application forms to IIFM: December 5, 2007
Step 1: All applicants seeking admission in PGDFM at IIFM, have to appear for Common Admission Test (CAT) to be held on 18th November, 2007. The CAT application form and bulletin can be obtained from selected branches of UTI/ Vijaya Banks from July 16th till August 16, 2007. The last date for submitting CAT application is 8th September, 2007. The IIFM will use the CAT score only for short-listing the candidates for postgraduate programme. IIMs have no role either in the selectionprocess or in the conduct of the programme.
Step 2: IIFM Application Form: Candidate should also obtain IIFM application form personally or by sending DD of Rs.700/- (350 for SC & ST) only, in favour of The 'Director IIFM, payable at Bhopal. The candidate should keep a photocopy of Bank Draft with them as it would be needed at the time of filling the application. Alternatively, the application form can also be downloaded from the website given below but in such cases the filled in forms must accompany a Bank Draft of Rs.700 (Rs.350 for SC/ST).
Step 3: GD/Interview: Short-listed candidates shall be called for Group Discussion and Interview at IIFM, Bhopal during February/March 2008.
Application form can be downloaded from www.iifm.ac.in/admission or www.envindia.com or www.paryavaran.com .
CAT 2007 revision classes rock!
Barely had the reverberations of "Quant for Dummies" died, there was a new noise of the late night achievers batch. And now there's something to rock all you CAT '07 aspirants further:
The proverbial worm for the early bird: Morning revision classes kick off tomorrow at 7:00 a.m.
ITS NOW OR NEVER! LETS ROCK CAT '07!
Mock CAT-10 Analysis
Overview:
The pattern has been adapted keeping in mind the likely possibility of CAT 2007.
In this paper, Logical Reasoning based Data Interpretation and Quantitative Ability sections were above average and Verbal Ability section was of average difficulty level, having few questions in each section that could be managed easily.
The information the cover page made available to you was:
| There were 90 questions in all, distributed over three sections. Each section had 30 questions and carried 4 marks for each question. Wrong answers carried negative marks equal to one-fourth of the marks allotted to the question. Total time available to answer all the sections was two and a half hours. |
Executive Summary:
A synopsis on how this paper could have been attempted is:
| Section | Topic | Total Qs | Suggested Time (in min.) | Possible number of attempts | Possible Score* |
| I | Logical Reasoning and Data Interpretation | 30 | 50 | 8 | 22 |
| II | Verbal Ability | 30 | 50 | 16-18 | 33-35 |
| III | Quantitative Ability | 30 | 50 | 10 | 30 |
| | Total | 90 | 150 | 34 | 85 |
*Note: The number of attempts and the score has been worked out on the basis of the experts’ insight on how the students would have taken the test and what score IIMs have been considering for dispatching the call letters. The correct cut-offs can be confirmed statistically only after seeing the actual performance of all of you.
SECTION I: LOGICAL REASONING AND DATA INTERPRETATION
One should have looked at the questions, which were easy and placed randomly in the paper.
To begin with, the choice of the first set should have been made on the basis of comfort or familiarity of the set. The decision of leaving a set should be made within 5 minutes on the set unless you are very clear of what you are doing and the concept had been cracked.
| Set 1 | This set could have been solved by considering the relative difference of the ages with respect to any one child. One could have listed down the ages of all the children as on any fixed date and then could have handled all the 3 questions without any hassles. In the third question one could have considered the answer options and taken the age of the youngest child as x and expressed the other 2 in terms of x. The sum of all the three should have been a multiple of 3.It was a must attempt set. |
| Set 2 | These were one of the easiest questions in the set. One needed to find the missing link between the starting statement and the conclusion. It could have been seen that in 4 only 1 or 2 could have been possible which could have been further solved to know that such values did not exist below 50. Hence, the answer was option 2. Similarly in 5 one should have realised that Poornima’s husband’s brother’s wife was to be considered. |
| Set 3 | This was a calculation driven set and one needed to be very careful here. A slight mistake and one could be misled to the wrong answer. One could have looked at attempting 1 or 2 questions only and then left this set for other doable sets. |
| Set 4 | This again could have intimidated you, but after some pencil pushing one could have realised that first 2 questions of this set could have been easily tackled. One just needed to check for the LCM of the denominators of the elements used in the respective compound row and also check for the common factor in the numerator and hence found out the minimum amount of each element used to form various compounds. This knowledge was sufficient to crack the first 2 problems and then one could have skipped this set. |
| Set 5 | This set was on familiar lines and hence one could have been tempted to go for it, but considering the standalone nature of all the questions, there was a possibility of one getting lost amidst so much data. Again, one could have looked at attempting 1 or 2 questions and left the set. |
| Set 6 | This was an open set wherein after a certain stage of deductions one would need question conditions one by one to make new possibilities. This question is seemingly easy but when one starts doing the same it is possible that one gets lots of arrangements and hence loses the patience to continue with the set and mark some wrong answer in haste. One should have rather selected one or two easy ones and went about doing them and then skipped the set. |
| Set 7 | One could have looked at doing a few questions from this set as well if none at all. On the basis of the given table one could have filled up some of the spaces in the second table. Now on the basis of each question one could have checked the tables and come up with new deductions. One should have definitely attempted questions 27 and 28. |
Hence, about 8-9 questions from this section could have been attempted.
Assuming 75%+ accuracy, a score of 22+ was easily possible.
| Q 31-35 RC Passage- Huxley | A passage, which was moderately challenging to read. The questions required good inference skills. You could have got 2 questions correct out of 4attempts. |
| Q 36-40-Poem | A tough proposition. It was not easy to understand the poem and answer the questions. You could have left this. |
| Q 41-45 RC Passage- Sustainability | A passage, which tested your reading comprehension skills. The passage was reasonably tough to read and the questions challenged your inference and further application skills. If attempted you could have got 2 questions correct out of 5. |
| Q 46-48 Para-completion | A set of easy – moderate Para-completion questions with a twist. You had to find the opening statement. You could have easily got 2 questions correct out of 3 attempts. |
| Q 49-52 Critical Reasoning | Q 49 and 50 were doable whereas questions 51 and 52 were on the tougher side. You could have got 2 correct out of 2 attempts. |
| Q 53-57 Cloze | This was a moderately difficult cloze set. You could have got 2 questions correct out of 5 attempts. |
| Q 58-60 | A different question type in which you had to rearrange paragraphs. You may have left this because it was time consuming. |
SECTION III: QUANTITATIVE ABILITY
This section had a good mix of easy questions spread evenly across the section. One should have identified them and attempted maximum from them in order to push the score higher.
In Q62, the combined weights could have been represented by a + b, a + c, a + d, b + c … and so on and then each of these values could have been found out individually.
In Q. 65, if one observed carefully, you could see that the difference of any two consecutive terms was in increasing powers of 5.This was enough to know the next term in the series.
In Q. 68, for minimum value one’s intention should have been to take max x and also keeping in mind the integers being distinct. The values of x should have been 15,1,4 respectively giving the sum as 20.For maximizing one should have taken maximum value for z, so the values should have been 1,2 and 72 respectively for x, y and z so that the sum was 75.Hence, the difference was 55.
Although Q. 69 looked dreadful to read, it could have been solved easily. The key was just to read through the problem. If the number of sheep in the year 2006 with Ramu were n, then one could have easily established the relation n2-97n-3500=0 and solved the quadratic to get to n=125.
In Q. 72 one needed to express the equation as y=x+1/y=>4x=4(y-1/y). Now putting the extreme values of y from the given range to get the range of 4x as 3.33<=4x<=8.4.Hence option (4) was correct.
Q. 73 and Q.74 could have been very easily cracked if one could have realised that CF=2AB=2 units and in turn GJ=2CF=4 units. The area of ABKLMN could have been calculated as sum of the regular hexagon JKLMNG and the trapezium ABJG. Also, for calculating AM one could have calculated the horizontal distance between A and M and also the vertical distance and then used the Pythagoras theorem.
In Q.76 one could have found more than one pair of (x, y) satisfying the condition out of which max value for xy could have been 32.Now, one needed to find the highest power of 6 in 32! => the highest power of 3 in 32! =[32/3]+[32/9] +[32/27]=10+3+1=14.
Q.77 was a must attempt and one needed to consider the 8 - units digit of each multiplied term to reach the conclusion. This could have been done by using the cyclicity funda
Q.78 was a must attempt. One could have put values and realised that only for N=1 the expression is satisfied because |2N-1|>N for N>1 or N<=0.
In Q.86, one could have saved the time by calculating the first 3 terms approximately as the higher terms are almost negligible in magnitude. Hence 2/3 could have been the closest value.
Q.89 was on fibonacci series. and one could have easily calculated the values of f(4),f(5),f(6),f(7),f(8) and found out the value of the expression as 13/2
Hence, about 10-11 questions from this section could have been attempted.
Assuming 75%+ accuracy, a score of 30+ was easily possible.
All the best!!
Career Launcher Team
An interesting dope on Sethu Samudram Project
With the CAT coming closer, I thought this could be an interesting aspect to the Sethu Samudram Project. I am guessing that this could be one of the topics of GDs this year!
Read the full article 'The Sethu Samudram does not make nautical sense' at
http://www.rediff.com/news
Please don't miss the responses from the readers to get ready for objections from the other GD participants.
I found the following response most witty:
by Indian Indian on Oct 09, 2007 01:50 AM
We don't want mariners looking into all this...because then, the motives get mixed up. They seem to be just thinking straight-forward... Whereas, in the eyes of the DMK, the project has enormous benefits: One, the immediate and obvious advantage of some 20% as bribes, i.e., 20% of Rs. 2400 crores, that is, Rs. 480 crores. Will Captain Balakrishnan give this money to Karunanidhi and TR Baalu?
Secondly, DMK sees this as one more opportunity to destroy a Hindu heritage, so that they can make their Muslim support even stronger (and, strangely, this does not come at the cost of losing Hindu support, because Hindus think straight-forward and get confusesd by all the glib talk by DMK politicians, and still vote for the destroyers of Hinduism)... Will the Captain ensure better Muslim support for DMK, if this project is dropped?
The Dummies' Methods: Zindabad!
There is an excitement in the air now a days at the centre...of anticipation and nervousness. Suddenly, after the "Quant for Dummies" session by Nitin this week, people started coming to the centre with renewed hope.
I wanted to pay tribute to this renewed vigour and take the opportunity to invite those who are feeling low for obvious reasons. Come and be a part of the new revolution that is taking the CL, Pune centre by storm.
Personally, I am enthused by the ways and means of the new czars of CAT, who till now didn't even want to give it a shot. But armed with the belief that CAT Quant is not for the Mathematicians of this world, they have picked up the lost threads, and in style too!
If you haven't yet booked your time slots for one-to-one counseling, make sure you do it at the earliest. But before that, take a look at the SIS pages with all the details about your Mock Tests. My favorite pages are the ones with Selectivity Analysis for each Test. For those who are new to the SIS, these links come under the Details tab.
Lets celebrate the beginning of the slog overs in the run up to CAT!
solution :
XAT on January 6th
XAT 2008 will be conducted in 31 cities on January 06, 2008; Test Timings: 10:00 am to 12:30 pm
Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Bangalore, Berhampur, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Cochin, Coimbatore, Dehradun, Goa, Gurgaon, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Jamshedpur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, New Delhi, Noida, Patna, Pune, Raipur, Ranchi, Rourkela, Trivandrum, Vadodara, Visakhapatnam.
MOCK XAT Analysis
Overview:
In this paper, Quantitative Ability, Verbal Ability and Reasoning and Decision making Ability section were high on difficulty index.
The information the cover page made available to you was:
| There were 130 questions in all, distributed over three sections. Section A had 49 questions, section B had 41 questions and section C had 40 questions carried 4 marks for each question. Wrong answers carried negative marks equal to one-third of the marks allotted to the question. Total time available to answer all the sections was two hours and 20 more minutes were available for essay writing. |
Executive Summary:
A synopsis on how this paper could have been attempted is:
| Section | Topic | Total Qs | Suggested Time (in min.) | Possible number of attempts | Possible Score* |
| I | Quantitative Ability | 49 | 40 | 15 | 11 |
| II | Verbal Ability | 41 | 40 | 20 | 12 |
| III | Reasoning and Decision Making Ability | 40 | 40 | 14 | 10 |
| | Total | 130 | 120 | 49 | 33+ |
*Note: The number of attempts and the score has been worked out on the basis of the experts’ insight on how the students would have taken the test and what score XAT have been considering for dispatching the call letters. The correct cut-offs can be confirmed statistically only after seeing the actual performance of all of you.
SECTION A: QUANTITATIVE ABILITY
The quantitative ability section was a mixed bag having problems from data interpretation as well. Problems were from a variety of topics. One could have made selective attempts in this section. Let us see a few questions that could have been done.
For Q. 1 one could have substituted x by 1/x and solved to eliminate f(x) and got a quadratic equation ,which was 6x2-1749x-4=0.The sum of roots here was 1749/6=291.5
In Q.2 8643 by 132 =>4x (2 x 8642 by 33), but remainder for 820k by 33 is 1.Hence 4x(2 x 8642 by 33 = 4x (128 by 33)=429=116
One could have looked at Q. 6 for an attempt. If ‘a’ be the repeated root and the other root be b. Then, one could have easily established the following relations:
b= -a/2, A=6b, B=a3 and A3=-27B. One could plug in values for B and check out the value for A and hence find out the value of A+3B. For A+ 3B to be 72, A= -9 and B=27 which is not possible since then b is no longer an integer and hence the answer.
For Q.10 one could have calculated all the values from T3 to T6 then it was just putting the same to get the ratio T6/T5. A must attempt question.
Q.18 could have been done pretty quickly if one could understand that the linear equation was nothing but the equation of a line in the intercept form and (x2+y2)1/2 was the radius of the circle whose center was at origin. In order to have a minimum value for radius the line must be a tangent to it and hence the distance from the centre, i.e. origin to the tangent must be calculated which was 375/(152 +202)=15
Q. 19 and Q. 20 were easy. One should have surely not missed out on these two. One could have found out all the possible values for the expression for different m and n in the given range and then one could have moved to answer the questions with ease.
Q. 22 again was given to check your basics. The condition for unique solution could have yielded a-1/2 not equal to 3/(b+1), which could have further yielded (a-1)(b+1) not equal to 6. Once this basic was clear, one could have gone on to find out as to how many values satisfied the same.
One could have attempted Q. 24 from the set of 2 questions as it was the biggest sitter in this section and could have let go of the other question in the set. The possible codes could have been 210 if not taking any could have been also a part of code which was not the case here and hence one had to subtract 1.So the answer was 210-1=2003
In Q. 31 for the minimum possible sum of all the prime factors, the number should have been 29.So its composite factors were 22,23,24, 25,26,27,28.Hence, the minimum possible sum of prime factors=2.
In Q. 27 the statements alone would not have yielded any definite answer. Combining both statements, one could have got the following possibilities:
R-S-P-T-U-Q, R-S-P-U-T-Q, Q-T-U-P-S-R, Q-U-T-P-S-R.
From here one could have concluded that S was always adjacent to P.
In Q. 28 if one combined both the statements and looked ahead there was only one combination which gave CX=3 units, BX=1 unit and AZ = 2 units. Further it could have been deduced that ABC was a right angled triangle with angle B=90
In Q. 29,from statement I, both p and q could have been either positive or negative. Otherwise only p could have been negative and greater than –1.So it could not have been determined. From statement II, p and q could have been both negative or one of them was negative. So it could not have been determined.
SECTION B : VERBAL ABILITY
The Verbal Ability Section was Moderate- difficult and required astute question selection and concentrated solving.
|
| A set of difficult 6 sentence Para-jumbles. You could have attempted 3 and got 2 questions correct. |
| Q 54- 57 RC Passage | A doable passage with fact+ inferential questions .You could have attempted this passage and got at least 2 questions correct. |
| Q 58-61 Grammar Sentence Correction | A set of easy questions. You could have attempted all four getting 3 correct. |
| Q 62-66 RC Passage | A readable and doable passage with one fact and 4 inferential questions. Slightly time consuming but doable. You could have got 2 questions correct out of 4 attempts. |
| Q 67-70 Poem | A very difficult proposition to understand the poem and attempt the questions successfully. You could have left this. |
| Q 71-75 Contextual Synonyms | A set of 5 questions, which tested your knowledge and application of words. The choices were not easy and you could have ended up getting 2 questions correct from an attempt of 4. |
| Q 76-80 RC Passage | A passage, which was reasonably easy to read, but the questions were inferential with very close choices. It would have been better to leave out this passage. |
| Q 81-85 RC Passage | A moderate passage, which had a mixture of fact+ inferential questions. If attempted, you could have got 3 questions correct out of 5 attempts. |
| Q86-90 Critical Reasoning | Q 86 and 87 were moderate. The last three questions were easy and doable. A must attempt chunk .You could have attempted 3 questions getting at least 2 correct. |
| | |
Overall you could have attempted 18-20 questions getting 13 -14 correct. This is because your accuracy would have suffered because of close choices.
SECTION C : REASONING AND DECISION MAKING ABILITY
This was a new type of section introduced in the XAT last time. This paper comprised of logical reasoning and case study problems, something one would not have been used to. The mute point is not to get unsettled by such a section as it remains and behaves the same for any other test taker too. One should have attempted this section not to mention the whole paper with a cool and composed head. Let us have a look at a few problems from this section, which could have been tackled.
| Q. 91 | A single read to this question revealed that it was doable. A sum of 195 could have been possible with (95,100), (96.99) and (97,98). After that the next lower sum possible was with (93,94) that was 187 after which next possibility was with (91,92) that was 183 and so on. Now it was to be seen that it takes a form of a decreasing AP with common difference –4.after 5 moves one could had got rid of the sum 183.So, after 35 moves it should have been 183-4x30=63. |
| | |
| Q. 93 | A problem based on a very basic concept of remainders. If one cared to go through this problem one would have realized that the total number of devotees when divided by 2,3,4 etc respectively gives remainder 1,2,3 and so on. One could have taken the LCM of first 10 natural numbers and subtracted 1 from that to obtain the total number of devotees, which was 2520-1=2519. Now, one had to calculate the remainder when 2519 was divided by 16 and which was 7. |
| (Q.94 to 99) | One could have attempted this set though cautiously. The names could be denoted by PS, CS, Now value of x for OP was either Rs. 10 or Rs. 20 or Rs. 30.So, one could tabulate 3 conditions from the above conclusions and then go about answering each and every problem in this set. Once the table was ready, it would hardly have taken any time to crack the 6 problems. |
|
| One could have attempted this logical reasoning set. The first question could be solved by verifying the given conditions. Here only option (e) satisfied all the restrictions given in the question. For the next question one had to fill 14 positions and out of these positions, 2 counselors worked on 4 days, during the week. Other 2 counselors worked on 3 days during the week. If only Noori and Juliya worked on Wednesday, then they could not work on 4 days during the week. So, Ruhana and Fatina worked on 4 days during the week. And the possible schedule could have been tabulated. Noori and Juliya worked on Friday in both cases. One could have attempted other questions of this set by tabulating the possible cases for the corresponding individual questions. Had one been patient enough one could have answered all the questions here. |
|
| This variety came as a surprise in the XAT paper last year. This set was relatively easy to handle; however, the only concern was the lengthy directions given in the question. One could have looked at attempting this set. |
| Q 124- 127 | This case study was also of moderate level of difficulty and hence one could have leveraged on this, if one possessed a good reading speed. One could have scored from here too. |
| Q 128-130 | This was tough. One could have avoided this and saved oneself from negative marking. All in all the case study section was of above average level of difficulty. |
This translates to an attempt of about 14 questions. For a realistic accuracy of 80%, a score of 10 could have been achieved.
Sample Essay:
Topic – “Indo-US strategic partnership is a major step towards a multi-polar world”
Write-up:
What is a multi-polar world? Discuss bi-polar and Multi-polar world.
· Define multi-polar world as a world where political power is not concentrated in one or two Power Blocs but is more evenly spread
· Define traditional bi-polar world (US &
Advantages and disadvantages of a bi-polar world
· Discuss disadvantages of a bi-polar model with historical examples (Cold War, Arms Race, Power Blocs, Uneven development)
Why is there a need for a multi-polar world?
· Discuss how the world has changed through globalization, improved communication
· New challenges faced by the world from global terrorism, lack of economic development in major areas of Asia,
· Hence talk about need for more balanced sharing of power and resources away from concentration in one or two blocs
Current status of power-alliances in the world
- Some bi-polarity still exists (viz. US and
- Signs of grouping for economic resources evident in Asia (Russia & China & Central Asian republics) vs. (US,
History of Indo-US alliance
- Traditionally it has been frosty with
- However, post 9/11 and the global shift of terrorism closer to
- Traditionally being part of the Non-Aligned movement,
- While
How the Indo-US strategic alliance will impact the world.
- Its outlook is neutral and non-groupist
- It is a natural leader of SAARC countries and shares many regional concerns
- It is home to a growing economy with fast progress in many global fields such as software
- Indo-US alliance will be a major balancing factor in troubled
Is it a major step or not. Reasons for the same
- Explore this in line with the above arguments and conclude.
All the best!!
Career Launcher Team
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Explanation correction:
Q. 108:
Read option (d) explanation as “ Option (d) is possible when a = 28, b = 26 and d = 36. So a + b + d = 90”
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
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