DPM 83

A to E

A. Words along with their meaning, Pronunciation and usage

Landfill /ˈlan(d)fɪl/
[Noun] the disposal of waste material by burying it, especially as a method of filling in and
reclaiming excavated pits.
Usage - Recycling and waste reduction are critically important in an effort to cut our dependency
on landfill sites.

Leach /liːtʃ/
[Verb] (with reference to a soluble chemical or mineral) drain away from soil, ash or similar
material by the action of percolating liquid, especially rainwater.
Usage – The chief sources of phosphorus in river water are the weathering of rocks and the
leaching out of fertilizers from agricultural land.

Lilac water /ˈlʌɪlək/ /ˈwɔːtə/

[Noun] recycled water that is unsuitable for drinking.
Usage – Many neighbourhoods are starting to use lilac water for irrigating their lawns and parks.

Loam /ləʊm/
[Noun] a soil composed of sand, silt and clay in relatively even concentration (about 40-40-20%
concentration respectively).
Usage - Lodes of ore and inches of fertile loam have little bearing on a nation's prosperity and
influence anymore.

Larger than life

[Idiom] very imposing, renowned, or impressively influential.
Usage – He has a larger than life presence in his field.
Laugh up your sleeve
[Idiom] to be secretly amused.
Usage – They are very polite in your presence, but you get the feeling that they’re laughing up
their sleeves.

Law unto oneself

[Idiom] a person who behaves in an independent way, ignoring rules and what is generally
accepted as correct.
Usage – She is a law unto herself; she doesn’t abide by the rules.

Like shooting fish in a barrel

[Idiom] a very easy task.
Usage – Finding loopholes in government policies is unfortunately like shooting fish in a barrel.

Jekyll and Hyde

[Phrase] refers to someone having a dual personality, one side of which is good and the other
evil. The origin of the phrase comes from Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886).
Usage – He’s a real Jekyll and Hyde; you never know when she will become unpleasant.

Just what the doctor ordered

[Idiom] exactly what is required or wanted.
Usage – A cold beverage on a hot day is just what the doctor ordered.
B. RC Passage (with Link)

Article 1 : https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/big-tech-pandemic-power-
grab/612238/

Summary : This article discusses on the possible nefarious motives of Big Tech companies
during the Pandemic. The author hints at the possible scenario of Big Tech compensating for
governmental failures and a growing nexus of Capitalism, Big Tech and regulation manipulation
which will result in Big Tech gaining unchecked authority and power.

Article 2 : https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/16/the-end-of-plastic-new-
plant-based-bottles-will-degrade-in-a-year

Summary : A biochemicals company is hoping to make plastics from organic materials. The
success of this project may lead to efficient partnerships between food and drink companies
while simultaneously reducing plastic pollution.

Article 3 : https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thousands-of-tons-of-microplastics-are-
falling-from-the-sky/

Summary : This article focuses the disturbing trend of how microplastics travel across the
globe and their creation from everyday products. The focus shifts from recognition of the trend
to the sheer scale of its cause and effect.
Article 4 : https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-search-for-new-words-to-
make-us-care-about-the-climate-crisis

Summary : This interesting article focuses on the 'limited' capacity of present vocabulary to
grasp and sensitize climate crisis. A collection of essays creates a new 'lexicon' to deal with this
crisis and the new variables created by the same.

Article 5 : https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/04/can-brain-science-pull-
families-out-of-poverty/523479/

Summary : Can Poverty physically impact the brain? The "Empath Intergenerational Mobility
Project" explores the possibilities of using poverty as a field of study under brain science and to
create new insights into and a deeper understanding of this wondrous organ.
C. RC Passage (with Questions)

We are lousy at making up our minds. Advertising may goad us with slogans like “The choice is
clear” and “There is only one good choice”, and the economists who champion national choice
theory may still evoke a generic, utility-maximizing consumer who sizes up every situation in
terms of his personal advantage. But after several decades of research it has become widely
accepted, that the ability of one of us to choose what’s in our best interest is severely limited.

On the one hand, the constant obligation to choose leaves people perpetually anxious and, at
times, incapable of making up their minds at all. It doesn’t matter if the choice concerns
shampoos (Where the differences can be difficult to discern but matter greatly). We dither and
refuse to commit, because to make a choice is to enter a realm of uncertainty and missed
opportunities. On the other hand, given the dominance of the view that choice-making stands for
independence and personal responsibility, we can’t help feeling guilty when, once we have
made up our minds, things go away. We are conditioned to conclude not that luck, fate, God or
some other force has let us down, but that the choices we have made must have been less than
optimal – which only aggravates the stress of the next “Preference determination”, this is the
“mental and emotional tax” that too much freedom of choice exacts. We – meaning everyone
who lives in countries dominated by the ideology of consumerism, democracy and individualism
– feel habitually worn out by all the effort.

Plus, there are secondary effects of choice overload that we have hardly recognized, much less
rectified. Many of our choices turn out, upon reflection, to be largely meaningless (think of those
scarcely distinguishable shampoos): we are all a lot less free than we generally suppose. But
most of us also fail to notice how a consumer-oriented focus on the value of exercising our
options leaves out and, indeed, punishes others, especially the poor. Adults without the
economic means to enter the market never face the same range of possibilities, yet their (and
their children’s) failure to flourish is routinely ascribed to their not having “taken responsibility”
and made the “right choices” whether in school, on the street or around the dinner table. This
diagnosis airbrushes structural inequality out of the picture. What’s more, our collective
obsession with individual choice distracts us from pushing collective solutions to these
dilemmas. It seems we are always on the way home to ponder (and worry about) all the
incredible possibilities before us on Match.com or the 700-channel desert of cable TV.

It’s a verdict around which a lucrative genre of business and self-help books has developed. On
the heels of bestsellers like Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow; How We Decide, by
the discredited former New Yorker staff writer Jonah Lehrer; and Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The
Power of Thinking Without Thinking, all of which successfully popularized scholarly findings on
our mental fallibility, have come a slew of instruction manuals promising business people,
consumers and even the lovelorn the key to beating the decision-making odds.

But what if such how-to manuals, with their emphasis on enlarging the scope of personal
responsibility to include choosing to monitor one’s own decision-making psychology, are better
seems as symptoms of what ails us? What if the real problem is the imperative of making all
those choices in all those different reals, in the first place?

Q1) The author of the passage supports which of the following observations about the rational -
choice theory?

(A) We are easily manipulated by those in the business of manufacturing situations bloated
with options.
(B) A critique of the proliferation of choice can allow for a serious re-framing of the market
model.
 (C) Flummoxed by all the possibilities of endlessly expanding choice sets, people yearn for
guidance in how to limit their choices.
(D) The market itself restricts our choices as much as it enables them, leaving all of us
feeling overwhelmed.

Q2) The second paragraph of the passage addresses which of the following issues (on the one
hand …… on the other …)?

(A) The impulsive, unreflective aspect of choice vs the analytic.

(B) The inescapable over-abundance of choice vs the unpleasant consequences of
performing badly in the business of decision making.
(C) Walking out of the store with a purchase vs being paralyzed by indecision when it comes
to deciding what to buy.
(D) The expansion of choice as an unqualified good vs what needs choosing.

Q3) According to the passage, which of the following would qualify as an example of choice
overload?

(a) The supermarket offering an average of 40,000 different items from which to prepare
tonight’s dinner.
(b) A woman’s right to abortion.
(c) The technological revolution associated with the home computer that has multiplied the
offerings in every domain from the hundreds of thousands to the millions or billions.
(d) Whether to move an apple or a doughnut closer to the cafeteria cash register.
(e) 700 channels on cable TV.
(f) Match.com, an online dating service with 21,575,000 members.
(A) a, c, d, e and f
(B) a, b, c, e and f
(C) a, c, e and f
(D) a, b, c, d, e and f

Q4) The author of the passage mentions “the poor” to imply

 (A) how limited the choices are for some, and how aggravating an abundance of choice is
for others.
(B) that the state should regulate or even restrict the menu of options.
(C) that maybe we need to focus a little less on perfection and a more on joys of simply
spending time with the people we love.
(D) that they did not make informed and meaningful choices.

Q5) Which of the following inferences is supported by the last paragraph (But what if… in the
first place)?

(A) If we understand our foibles, and learn to choose more self-consciously, each of us will
do a lot better making up our minds in the future.
(B) We have become overwhelmed and even tyrannized by our culture’s overinvestment in
choices.
(C) If we move away from the tendency to see an idealized world of free choices as the
ground on which we all operate, we can acknowledge the various constraints that
produce our bad choices.
(D) Genuine choice exists only in some utopia yet to be achieved.
D. Quantitative Aptitude

Q.1. Ajay went to a market to buy a total of 90 apples, oranges and bananas. He bought an
equal number of oranges and bananas. The ratio of the number of apples and oranges he
bought is 5: 2. If the price of each orange was equal to that of each apple, he could have
skipped the purchase of bananas and instead purchased the same number of apples and
oranges as he actually bought for the same total amount. If the prices (in ₹) are all integers, find
the minimum possible total expenditure he incurred (in ₹).

Q.2. A particular sum of money amounts to ₹4000 in the first 4 years and ₹32,000 after 7 years
at a certain rate of interest compounded annually. What is the amount after 5 years (in ₹)?
(A) 8000 (B) 10000 (C) 1000 (D) 250

Q.3. A man is travelling from A to B in a car whose tank's capacity is 20 litres, with the reserve
level at 1/6thof the tank's capacity. He fills up the tank and after travelling for 250 km finds that
the fuel is at the reserve level. He fills 3 more litres and just manages to cover the remaining
distance by using up all the fuel. What is the distance between A and B? (in km)
Q.4. P and Q work for India Forge, a forging company. P can forge an engine piston in 15 days
and Q can forge the engine piston in 20 days. They decide to forge an engine piston together.
But on the 1stday P works at 25% of his usual rate and Q at his usual rate. On the 2nd day P
works at his usual rate and Q works at 33.33% of his usual rate. If from the 3rd day they both
work at their usual rates, how many more days will they take to forge the engine piston?
(A) 72/7 (B) 142/7 (C) 15 (D) 121/2

Q.5. Aisi wrote the first few natural numbers in her book but happened to miss out one of the
numbers. She later calculated the sum of all the numbers that she wrote and divided it by what
she thought was the number of numbers she had written. If the result she thus obtained was
437/11, find the number that she missed out.
(A) 73 (B) 17 (C) 76 (D) None of these

Direction for Q.6 and 7: Ten different samples of milk solution- A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I and J
are taken and the concentration of each sample(total quantity of milk as a % of total quantity
solution) is 78%, 57%, 82%, 84%, 98%, 66%, 34%, 87%, 79% and 71% respectively.

Q.6 If two samples are taken and it is required to form a sample whose concentration is 80%,
then a maximum of how many distinct pairs of samples are there, which will never give the
desired result for any ratio of the volume?
(A) 21 (B) 20 (C) 15 (D) 16

Q.7 If three samples are taken and it is required to form a sample whose concentration is more
than 82%, then a maximum of how many distinct triplets of samples are there, which can give
the desired result for any ratio of the volume?
(A) 20 (B) 84 (C) 35 (D) 85
Q.8. If sin 𝑥 + sin2 𝑥 = 1, the value of
cos16 𝑥 + 4 cos14 𝑥 + 5 cos12 𝑥 + cos10 𝑥 − 2 cos8 𝑥 − cos6 𝑥 is
(A) 1 (B) -1 (C) 2 (D) 0

Q.9. How many ordered pairs of integers (x, y) satisfy the equation
13 5 1
𝑥
−𝑦 = 8 ?

Q.10.Five points A, B, C, D and E lie on a line I1 and points P, Q, R, and S lie on another line l2.
Each of the five points on I1 is connected to each of the points on l2, by means of straight lines
terminated by the points. Then excluding the given points, the maximum number of points at
which the lines can intersect is
E. DILR – 1 Set

Directions for questions 1 to 4: These questions are based on the information given
below.

Two houses - Rohini and Sagarika were guarded by four guards - G1, G2, G3 and G4. On any
day of a week a house is guarded by exactly one guard. Due to security measures each day the
guards are changed but the guard will be the same for the same house on the same day of
different weeks, i.e., if G1, was the guard of Sagarika on Monday of a particular week, he will be
the guard of Sagarika on every Monday. No guard will be posted to guard in three consecutive
days and no guard is posted at both the houses simultaneously. None of them guards the same
house on two consecutive days. Further the following information is also known.

(i) In a week, each guard is posted at each of the houses for the same number of days.

(ii). No guard can be posted for more than four days in a week. G1 and G2 were posted for
same number of days in a week.

(iii) On Wednesday, Monday and Tuesday, Rohini was guarded by G4, G2 and G3 respectively.

(iv) On Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, Sagarika was guarded by G3, G4 and G2 respectively.

1. Who was the guard at Rohini on Sunday?

(A) G3 (B) G4 (C) G1 (D) G2

2. Who was the guard at Sagarika on Tuesday?

(A) G1 (B) G2 (C) G3 (D) G4

3. Who was the guard at Rohini on Thursday?

(A) G2 (B) G3 (C) G1 (D) G4

4. How many occasions were there when these houses were guarded by the same guard on
two consecutive days in a week i.e., Sunday to Saturday?

(A) One (B) Two (C) Three (D) Four