List of top Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension (VARC) Questions asked in Xavier Aptitude Test

Analyse the following passage and provide appropriate answers

An example of a scientist who could measure without instruments is Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), a physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938. He had a well-developed knack for intuitive, even casual-sounding measurements. One renowned example of his measurement skills was demonstrated at the first detonation of the atom bomb, the Trinity Test site, on July 16, 1945, where he was one of the atomic scientists observing the blast from base camp. While final adjustments were being made to instruments used to measure the yield of the blast, Fermi was making confetti out of a page of notebook paper. As the wind from the initial blast wave began to blow through the camp, he slowly dribbled the confetti into the air, observing how far back it was scattered by the blast (taking the farthest scattered pieces as being the peak of the pressure wave). Fermi concluded that the yield must be greater than 10 kilotons. This would have been news since other initial observers of the blast did not know that lower limit. After much analysis of the instrument readings, the final yield estimate was determined to be 18.6 kilotons. Like Eratosthenes, Fermi was aware of a rule relating one simple observation — the scattering of confetti in the wind — to a quantity he wanted to measure.

The value of quick estimates was something Fermi was familiar with throughout his career. He was famous for teaching his students skills at approximation of fanciful-sounding quantities that, at first glance, they might presume they knew nothing about. The best-known example of such a "Fermi question" was Fermi asking his students to estimate the number of piano tuners in Chicago, when no one knows the answer. His students — science and engineering majors — would begin by saying that they could not possibly know anything about such a quantity. Of course, some solutions would be to simply do a count of every piano tuner perhaps by looking up advertisements, checking with a licensing agency of some sort, and so on. But Fermi was trying to teach his students how to solve problems where the ability to confirm the results would not be so easy. He wanted them to figure out that they knew something about the quantity in question.

Analyse the following passage and answer the questions.

Some words are highly inflammable. Fusion is one of them. You can get two sets of people into a war mode by just uttering the words “fusion music”. One set will breathe fire and say it violates the purity of music: the other set will tell you earnestly that it opens the borders of music.

Analyse the following passage and provide an appropriate answer for the questions that follow.

When we speak of the “probability of death”, the exact meaning of the experience can be defined in the following way only. We must not think of an individual, but of a certain class as a whole, e.g., “all insured men forty-one years old living in a given country and not engaged in certain dangerous occupations.”

A probability of death is attached to the class of men or to another class that can be defined in a similar way. We can say nothing about the probability of death of an individual even if we know this condition of life and health in detail. The phrase “probability of death”, when it refers to a single person, has no meaning at all.

Analyse the following passage and provide an appropriate answer for the questions that follow.

One key element of Kantian ethics is the idea that the moral worth of any action relies entirely on the motivation of the agent: human behaviour cannot be said good or bad in light of the consequences it generates, but only with regard to what moved the agent to act in that particular way. Kant introduces the key concept of duty to clarify the rationale underpinning of his moral theory, by analysing different types of motivation. First of all, individuals commit actions that are really undertaken for the sake of duty itself, which is, done because the agent thinks they are the right thing to do. No consideration of purpose of the action matters, but only whether the action respects a universal moral law. Another form of action (motivation) originates from immediate inclination: Everyone has some inclinations, such as to preserve one's life, or to preserve honour. These are also duties that have worth in their own sake. But acting according to the maxim that these inclinations might suggest, such as taking care of one's own health - lacks for Kant true moral worth. For example, a charitable person who donates some goods to poor people might do it following her inclination to help the others - that is, because she enjoys helping the others. Kant does not consider it as moral motivation, even if the action is in conformity with duty. The person acting from duty would in fact do it to the other because she recognizes that helping the others is her moral obligation. Final type of motivation suggested by Kant include actions that can be done in conformity with duty, yet are not done from duty, but rather as a mean to some further end. In order to illustrate this type of motivation, Kant provides the following example. A shopkeeper who does not overcharge the inexperienced customer and treats all customers in the same way certainly is doing the right thing - that is, acts in conformity with duty - but we cannot say for sure that he is acting in this way because he is moved by the basic principles of honesty: “It is his advantage that requires it”. Moreover, we cannot say that he is moved by an immediate inclination toward his customers since he gives no preference to one with respect to another. Therefore, concludes Kant, “his action was done neither from duty nor from immediate inclination but merely for purposes of self-interest”.

Analyse the following passage and provide an appropriate answer for the questions that follow.

Fashion is different from custom, or rather is a particular species of it. That is not the fashion which everybody wears, but which those wear who are of a high rank, or character. The graceful, the easy, and the commanding manners of the great, joined to the usual richness and magnificence of their dress, give a grace to the very form which they happen to bestow upon it. As long as they continue to use this form, it is connected in our imaginations with the idea of something that is genteel and magnificent, and though in itself it should be indifferent, it seems, on account of this relation, to have something about it that is genteel and magnificent too. As soon as they drop it, it loses all the grace, which it had appeared to possess before, and being now used only by the inferior ranks of people, seems to have something of their meanness and awkwardness.

Analyse the following transcript (from the movie Matrix) and provide an appropriate answer for the questions that follow:

Neo: Morpheus, what's happened to me? What is this place?
Morpheus: More important than what is when.
Neo: When?
Morpheus: You believe it's the year 1999 when in fact it's closer to 2199. I can't tell you exactly what year it is because we honestly don't know. There's nothing I can say that will explain it for you, Neo. Come with me. See for yourself. This is my ship, the Nebuchadnezzar. It's a hovercraft. This is the main deck. This is the core where we broadcast our pirate signal and hack into the Matrix. Most of my crew you already know.

(Next Scene: Construct)

Morpheus: This is the construct. It's our loading programme. We can load anything from clothing, to equipment, weapons, training simulations, anything we need.
Neo: Right now we're inside a computer programme?
Morpheus: Is it really so hard to believe? Your clothes are different. The plugs in your arms and head are gone. Your hair is changed. Your appearance now is what we call residual self image. It is the mental projection of your digital self.
Neo: This... this isn't real?
Morpheus: What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.

...This is the world that you know. The world as it was at the end of the twentieth century. It exists now only as part of a neural-interactive simulation that we call the Matrix. You've been living in a dream world, Neo... This is the world as it exists today. Welcome to the Desert of the Real. We have only bits and pieces of information but what we know for certain is that at some point in the early twenty-first century all of mankind was united in celebration. We marvelled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.
Neo: AI? You mean artificial intelligence?
Morpheus: A singular consciousness that spawned an entire race of machines. We don't know who struck first, us or them. But we know it was us that scorched the sky. At the time they were dependent on solar power and it was believed that they would be unable to survive without an energy source as abundant as the sun. Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate it seems is not without a sense of irony. The human body generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTU's of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion the machines have found all the energy they would ever need. There are fields, endless fields, where human beings are no longer born, we are grown. For the longest time I wouldn't believe it, and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watch them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living. And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is the Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world built to keep us under control in order to change a human being into this.
Neo: No. I don't believe it. It's not possible.
Morpheus: I didn't say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.
Neo: Stop. Let me out. Let me out. I want out.

Weekly forecast (Pisces): “The efforts you make could set the stage for some new opportunities later on. Keep ahead of the opposition by using your imagination and by being original.” For a person possessing a scientific temperament, this forecast for Pisces

Filmmakers tend to highlight their emotional points with visuals, rather than dialogue. Words tend to be the tools of playwrights. Images are the stuff that films are made of. Nevertheless, many successful films have been made from stage plays and contain little else than one location or one stage set. The option most opposite to the idea in the paragraph is:

Classify the following sentences into Fact (F), Judgment (J) and Inference (I) and choose the most suitable sequence: Fact (F): Known matter of direct observation, existing reality, verifiable truth.
Judgment (J): Opinion/estimate/anticipation of common sense or intention.
Inference (I): Logical deduction based on knowledge of facts.
(i) Proper allocation of resources is required for overall development of economy.
(ii) Government has decided to allocate the gas from KG basin to power fertiliser sector.
(iii) A court decision against the declared policy guidelines can result in government intervention in the form of an appeal.
(iv) Some section of society may consider this decision a deliberate attempt to protect private interest.

Social roles may either conflict or cooperate within any given person, depending upon the circumstances. They conflict when the behaviour patterns demanded by one role cannot be performed while performing the second role. Thus, one cannot easily be a saintly rake or a feminine brute, but given an understanding husband, a woman can be both a loving wife and a loving mother with no conflict between the roles.
Which of the following methods is used by the author to make his or her point?

Read the sentences and choose the option that best arranges them in a logical order. 1. Well, it may mean various things; but one very likely thinks first of all that a picture of the object comes before the child’s mind when it hears the word.
2. But what does this mean?
3. I will call it “ostensive teaching of words.” I say that it will form an important part of the training, because it is so with human beings; not because it could not be imagined otherwise.
4. But now, if this does happen – is it the purpose of the word? Yes, it may be the purpose. I can imagine such a use of words (of series of sounds).
5. This ostensive teaching of words can be said to establish an association between the word and the thing.

Read the sentences and choose the option that best arranges them in a logical order. 1. He might make the opposite mistake; when I want to assign a name to this group of nuts, he might understand it as a numeral.
2. Now, one can ostensibly define a proper name, the name of a colour, the name of a material, a numeral, the name of a point of the compass and so on.
3. The definition of the number two. "That is called 'two'." Pointing to two nuts is perfectly exact. But how can two be defined like that?
4. He may suppose this; but perhaps he does not.
5. The person one gives the definition to doesn’t know what one wants to call “two”; he will suppose that “two” is the name given to this group of nuts!