CAT 2020 Slot 2 — VARC Question 25
The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
The rural-urban continuum and the heterogeneity of urban settings pose an obvious challenge to identifying urban areas and measuring urbanization rates in a consistent way within and across countries. An objective methodology for distinguishing between urban and rural areas that is based on one or two metrics with fixed thresholds may not adequately capture the wide diversity of places. A richer combination of criteria would better describe the multifaceted nature of a city’s function and its environment, but the joint interpretation of these criteria may require an element of human judgment.
1. The difficulty of accurately identifying urban areas means that we need to create a rich combination of criteria that can be applied to all urban areas.
2. With the diversity of urban landscapes, measurable criteria for defining urban areas may need to be supplemented with human judgement.
3. Current methodologies used to define urban and rural areas are no longer relevant to our being able to study trends in urbanisation.
4. Distinguishing between urban and rural areas might call for some judgement on the objective methodology being used to define a city’s functions.
Answer & solution
Answer: 2
Medium
Capture the central claim and reject options that drop a key element or overstate it. The passage's point: because urban settings are so diverse, fixed-threshold metrics alone cannot define urban areas well - a richer set of criteria is needed, and interpreting them "may require an element of human judgment."
Three keywords. (i) the diversity / rural-urban continuum poses the challenge; (ii) objective metrics with fixed thresholds may not capture it; (iii) the joint interpretation "may require an element of human judgment." A faithful summary must keep the diversity and the human-judgment supplement.
Option 2 - keep. "With the diversity of urban landscapes, measurable criteria for defining urban areas may need to be supplemented with human judgement." This captures the diversity, the limits of measurable criteria, and the human-judgment supplement - all three, succinctly and with the passage's hedged "may."
Why the others fail. Option 1 stops at "a rich combination of criteria" and drops the crucial human-judgment element (and overstates with "applied to all urban areas"). Option 3 says current methods are "no longer relevant" - far too strong; the passage says they "may not adequately capture," not that they are obsolete, and it omits human judgment. Option 4 distorts: it makes the judgement be "on the objective methodology being used," whereas the passage wants human judgment as an added aid to interpret a richer set of criteria, not a verdict on the methodology.
Best summary: 2.