List of practice Questions

Deborah Mayo is a philosopher of science who has attempted to capture the implications of the new experimentalism in a philosophically rigorous way. Mayo focuses on the detailed way in which claims are validated by experiment, and is concerned with identifying just what claims are borne out and how. A key idea underlying her treatment is that a claim can only be said to be supported by experiment if the various ways in which the claim could be false have been investigated and eliminated. A claim can only be said to be borne out by experiment, and a severe test of a claim, as usefully construed by Mayo, must be such that the claim would be unlikely to pass it if it were false.
Her idea can be explained by some simple examples. Suppose Snell’s law of refraction of light is tested by some very rough experiments in which very large margins of error are attributed to the measurements of angles of incidence and refraction, and suppose that the re- sults are shown to be compatible with the law within those margins of error. Has the law been supported by experiments that have severely tested it? From Mayo’s perspective the answer s “no”, because, owing to the roughness of the measurements, the law of refraction would be quite likely to pass this test even if it were false and some other law differing not too much from Snell’s law were true. An exercise I carried out in my school-teaching days serves to drive this point home. My students had conducted some not very careful experiments to test Snell’s law. I there presented them with some alternative laws of refraction that had been suggested in antiquity and mediaeval times, prior to the discovery of Snell’s law, and invited the students to test them with the measurements they had used, to test Snell’s law; because of the wide margins of error they had attributed to their measurements, all of these alternative laws pass the test. This clearly brings out the point that the experiments in question did not constitute a severe test of Snell’s law. The law would have passed the test even if it were false and one of the historical alternatives true.

An expert group has sounded a timely warning on what ‘environmentally destructive tourism’ will mean to national parks and wildlife sanctuaries and the objectives they are supposed to serve. Given the unique and rare wildlife the country has been endowed with, the rationale for using the resources for attracting tourists from abroad is unassailable. This necessarily postu- lates that the flora and the fauna should be protected and conserved. As a matter of fact, much of the government’s interest in wildlife preservation has to do with the tremendous prospect of tourist traffic on that account. Yet the risk of the revenue-earning motivation overrunning the conservation imperatives is very real, the lure of the coveted foreign exchange that goes with this business only, is serving to enhance it several folds.
Even with the tourist inflow far below the potential, the pressure of visitors is said to have been already felt on the tiger reserves. With the Government of India’s declared intent to boost tourism quite justified for its own reasons, the need for eliminating the risk assumes a greater sense of urgency. The study team has noted that most of the 41 national parks and 165 wildlife sanctuaries surveyed are open to the tourists. The less frequented among them may not require special attention immediately in this respect as much as the ones that are major tourist attraction do. These include the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Maharashtra, Nandankanan in Orissa and Bannerghatta in Karnataka.
Over a year ago, the Indian Board for Wildlife expressed concern over the looming danger, and decided that the core areas of national parks and sanctuaries should be kept totally free from biotic disturbances, and the visitor be permitted to view the wildlife only from the areas marked out for the purpose. And now, the expert group has come up with the suggestion that a case by case evaluation be done of the “capacity” as well as the “limitations” of all the national parks and wildlife sanctuaries and based on such assessment an area-specific plan for tourist promotion within the “safety” norms be charted. That this is the most scientific way of going about the job, and that there is no time to lose can be readily conceded.

Match the dictionary definitions of the word "Catch" with its correct usage:
[A.] Capture
[B.] Grasp with senses or mind
[C.] Deception
[D.] Thing or person worth trapping Usage:
[E.] All her friends agreed that Prasad was a good catch.
[F.] The proposal sounds very good but where is the catch?
[G.] Hussain tries to catch the spirit of India in this painting.
[H.] Sorry, I couldn’t catch you. \bigskip

Choose the correct sequence of sentences:
[I.] It would perhaps be possible for him to be of some use to this brave girl
[II.] he said to himself, vaguely at first, that
[III.] without neglecting anything of what was due to his important mission.
[IV.] and this idea pleased him \bigskip

Choose the correct phrasal usage of the given words:
[I.] Indict to
[II.] Intrigue on
[III.] Endow with
[IV.] Trample on \bigskip

Justice Minister Bola Ige, confronted with the general incivility of local police, placed a ______ on the cads. Said the Hon. Bola Ige, “I pray that God will make big holes in their pockets.” \bigskip

Choose the option that points out sentence(s) with grammatical error(s):
[I.] I love the man dancing on the table.
[II.] I love the man’s dancing on the table.
[III.] In 1986 Elie Wiesel was named the Nobel Peace Prize recipient, an honour established by Alfred Nobel.
[IV.] Neither of the recommendations works as well as we thought they would.
[V.] Either the Minister or the Minister’s wife will have to excuse themselves from the reception to speak to the caterer. \bigskip

Let \( S \) be the set of rational numbers with the following properties:
[I.] \( \frac{1}{2} \in S \)
[II.] If \( x \in S \), then both \( \frac{1}{x+1} \in S \) and \( \frac{x}{x+1} \in S \) Which of the following is true?

\( P, Q, R \) are three consecutive odd numbers in ascending order. If the value of three times \( P \) is three less than two times \( R \), find the value of \( R \).

Consider the following statements: When two straight lines intersect, then:
[I.] Adjacent angles are complementary
[II.] Adjacent angles are supplementary
[III.] Opposite angles are equal
[IV.] Opposite angles are supplementary Which of these statements are correct?

If \( a, b, c \) are three real numbers, then which of the following is not true?

Let \( S \) denote the infinite sum: \[ S = 2 + 5x + 9x^2 + 14x^3 + 20x^4 + \ldots \quad \text{where } |x|<1 \] and the coefficient of \( x^n \) is \( \frac{1}{2}n(n+3) \). Then \( S \) equals:

ABCD is a rectangle. Points \( P \) and \( Q \) lie on \( AD \) and \( AB \) respectively. If triangles \( PAQ, QBC, \) and \( PCD \) all have the same areas and \( BQ = 2 \), then \( AQ = \) ?

In an examination, the average marks obtained by students who passed was \( x\% \), while the average of those who failed was \( y\% \). The average marks of all students taking the exam was \( z\% \). Find in terms of \( x, y, z \), the percentage of students taking the exam who failed.

If three positive real numbers \( a, b, c \) (with \( c>a \)) are in Harmonic Progression, then \( \log(a + c) + \log(a - 2b + c) \) is equal to:

In a factory making radioactive substances, it was considered that three cubes of uranium together are hazardous. So the company authorities decided to have the stack of uranium interspersed with lead cubes. But there is a new worker in the company who does not know the rule. So he arranges the uranium stack the way he wanted. What is the number of hazardous combinations of uranium in a stack of 5?

Which of the following expressions correctly represents the equivalent conductance at infinite dilution of ${Al2(SO4)3}$ ? Given that ${\wedge^{\circ}_{Al^{3+}}}$ and ${- \wedge^{\circ}_{SO^{2-}_4}}$ are the equivalent conductances at infinite dilution of the respective ions

The roots of the quadratic equation $x^{2}-2\sqrt{3}x-22 = 0 $ are :

An electron tube was sealed-off during manufacture at a pressure of $ 1.2\times 10^{-7}mm $ of mercury at $ 27^{\circ}C $ . Its volume is $ 100\,cm^{3} $ . The number of molecules that remain in the tube is

Prem invested a certain sum of money in a simple interest bond whose value grew to Rs 300 at the end of 3 years and to Rs 400 at the end of another 5 years. What was the rate of interest in which he invested his sum ?

If 5 students utilize 18 pencils in 9 days, how long at the same rate will 66 pencils last for 15 students?

A charged particle moving with veiocity $4 \times 10^6ms^{-1} $ enters perpendicuiar to a magnetic field $B=2 \, Wbm^{-2}.$ It moves in a circular path of radius 2 cm, then charge per unit mass is

For the magnetic field to be maximum due to a small element of current carrying conductor at a point, the angle between the element and the line joining the element to the given point must be

Two small magnets each of magnetic moment 10 $Am^2$ are placed in end on position 0.1 m apart from their centres. The force acting between them is