CAT Full-Length Mock Test 3

The Economics of Attention

In an economy where information is plentiful, the scarce resource is not the information itself but the attention needed to process it. This observation, made by the economist Herbert Simon in the early 1970s, has aged better than most predictions about computing. A stream of messages, alerts and videos competes for a limited number of waking hours, and the platforms that win that competition are those that hold attention longest, whatever the content happens to be.

The consequences are not all bad. Attention markets have funded free services that billions of people value, and they have given small creators a route to audiences that traditional gatekeepers once denied them. But they also reward whatever is most arresting rather than what is most accurate or useful, which tilts public conversation towards outrage and novelty. Critics sometimes describe this as manipulation; defenders reply that users are free to leave. Both claims contain some truth, and neither settles the question of design: a service can be freely chosen and still be built to make leaving harder than staying.

A more fruitful discussion would ask what kinds of friction are acceptable. A prompt asking whether you want to keep watching treats the user as a decision maker; an endlessly refreshing feed treats the user as a supply of minutes. Regulation and design guidelines could focus less on banning features than on requiring that the default is the one a reflective user would choose.

VARC: Passage 1 Questions Questions 1-5

Why Languages Die

Linguists estimate that roughly half of the world's seven thousand or so languages will fall silent by the end of this century. The usual explanation is economic: parents who want their children to find work encourage them to speak a dominant language, and within two or three generations the smaller language is no longer spoken at home. But economics alone does not explain the pattern. Some languages with very few speakers have survived for centuries inside isolated communities, while others with hundreds of thousands of speakers have declined swiftly once schools and broadcasting stopped using them.

What seems to matter is whether a language remains useful for the activities that people value. A language used for worship, trade, storytelling and everyday argument is hard to dislodge; a language reduced to greetings and festival songs is already dying, whatever the number of speakers. This is why revival projects that rely only on dictionaries and classroom lessons tend to disappoint, while those that create new reasons to use the language, such as radio programmes, online games and workplace use, have had more success.

None of this implies that a lost language can never return. Hebrew, once confined to prayer and scholarship, became the everyday language of millions in about a century. But the case is unusual, and it required a rare combination of political will, a motivated population and a country in which the revived language had immediate practical use.

VARC: Passage 2 Questions Questions 6-10

The Slow Science of Soil

Soil looks like a simple substance, but a handful of healthy soil contains more living organisms than there are people on Earth. These organisms, bacteria, fungi and tiny invertebrates, break down dead plant matter, release nutrients and bind particles into crumbs that hold water. Industrial farming, with its heavy ploughing and reliance on chemical fertilisers, tends to disrupt this community. Yields remain high for some years because fertiliser replaces what the soil's own biology once supplied, but the underlying structure erodes, and the land becomes more dependent on inputs each season.

Conventional agricultural research has been slow to measure this change, partly because the benefits of healthy soil are gradual and diffuse. A farmer who stops ploughing may see no improvement for three or four seasons, and a field trial that lasts two years can easily conclude that the change did nothing. Researchers who study soil argue that the problem lies in the time frame of the experiment, not in the soil: an effect that develops over a decade will not appear in a study designed to last for two seasons.

This mismatch between the pace of biology and the pace of funding is not unique to agriculture. Wherever the payoff of a practice is slow and its costs are immediate, short evaluation windows will tend to favour the quick fix.

VARC: Passage 3 Questions Questions 11-15

Type in the answer for the para-jumble and odd-sentence questions. For the rest, choose the best option.

VARC: Verbal Ability Questions Questions 16-24

16

The four sentences below, labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4, form a coherent paragraph when arranged in the right order. Type the correct order as a four-digit sequence (for example, 1234). 1. Once riders felt safe, even hesitant commuters began to switch from cars for short trips. 2. Cities that once treated the bicycle as a nuisance are now redesigning streets around it. 3. As a result, cycling grew fastest not where cyclists were encouraged but where they were protected. 4. The change began when planners noticed that protected lanes increased cycling far more than campaigns urging people to ride.

17

The four sentences below, labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4, form a coherent paragraph when arranged in the right order. Type the correct order as a four-digit sequence (for example, 1234). 1. That view changed in the 1950s, when researchers recording brain activity found distinct cycles through the night. 2. Deep sleep appears to restore the body, while dreaming sleep is linked to memory and emotion. 3. For most of history, sleep was treated as a pause in life rather than an active process. 4. Each cycle includes periods of deep sleep and of dreaming, and the two seem to serve different purposes.

18

The four sentences below, labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4, form a coherent paragraph when arranged in the right order. Type the correct order as a four-digit sequence (for example, 1234). 1. Some historians therefore credit the coffeehouse with helping to create modern public debate. 2. In seventeenth century England, coffeehouses became known as penny universities. 3. Because conversation crossed class lines, ideas spread faster than they could through printed books alone. 4. For the price of a cup, a customer could sit among merchants, scholars and writers and hear the news of the day.

19

Four of the five sentences below form a coherent paragraph; one is out of place. Type the number of the odd sentence. 1. The monsoon is driven by the difference in temperature between land and sea. 2. In summer the land heats faster, drawing in moist air from the ocean. 3. This moist air rises, cools and falls as heavy rain over the subcontinent. 4. Rice is the main crop of eastern India and is eaten at nearly every meal. 5. In winter the pattern reverses and dry winds blow from land to sea.

A Congestion charges cut traffic and pollution, and gain wider acceptance when the revenue improves public transport. B Congestion charges are unfair to low income commuters and should be abolished. C Cities introduce congestion charges mainly to raise revenue. D Public transport is the only way to reduce traffic in city centres.

A Typed notes are always better because they are longer. B The better note taking method depends on purpose: handwriting aids understanding, while typing captures more material. C Handwriting is the only method that helps students to think. D Students should avoid taking notes in class altogether.

A Satellite images are unreliable and should not be used for policy. B Forests are shrinking mainly because of illegal cutting. C Policies should punish those who cut down forests. D Satellite data alone is not enough for policy; it must be combined with an understanding of human activity.

A Museums have stopped displaying objects that were acquired unfairly. B Museums now question how objects were acquired as well as what they are, which complicates displays but informs visitors more. C Visitors prefer simple labels to detailed explanations. D Museums are losing visitors because their exhibitions are too complicated.

Admissions and Fees

A university admits students to five departments. The table shows the number of applicants, the number of seats and the annual fee per student (in ₹ thousand) for each department. Revenue from a department is its seats multiplied by its fee.

Department	Applicants	Seats	Annual fee (₹ thousand)
Computer Science	1200	150	180
Electrical	800	80	150
Mechanical	600	120	140
Civil	500	100	120
Mathematics	400	80	100

Answer Questions 25 to 29 using the table.

DILR: Set 1 Questions Questions 25-29

The Race

Five runners, P, Q, R, S and T, ran a race and finished in five different positions, with no ties. The following is known:

P finished ahead of Q.
R did not finish first or last.
S finished immediately after T, that is, if T finished in position n, S finished in position n + 1.
T did not finish first.

Answer Questions 30 to 34 using this information.

DILR: Set 2 Questions Questions 30-34

Quarterly Revenue

A company sells three products. The table shows quarterly revenue (in ₹ lakh) for the four quarters of a year.

Product	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4
Product A	40	50	60	70
Product B	80	70	60	50
Product C	30	45	60	75

Answer Questions 35 to 40 using the table.

DILR: Set 3 Questions Questions 35-40

The Project Plan

A small project has six tasks, A to F. The table shows how many hours each task takes and which tasks must be completed before it can start. A task can start as soon as all of its prerequisites are complete. A worker can do only one task at a time, and a task cannot be split between workers. Work starts at time 0.

Task	Duration (hours)	Must be completed first
A	3	None
B	2	None
C	4	A
D	3	A and B
E	2	C
F	3	C and D

Answer Questions 41 to 46 using this information.

DILR: Set 4 Questions Questions 41-46

Type in the answer for the questions without options. For the rest, choose the best option.

QA: Quantitative Ability Questions Questions 47-68