XAT 2014 — Decision Making Question 6
Read the following case – let and answer the questions that follow.
Ms. Banerjee, class teacher for 12th standard, wants to send teams (based on past performance) of three students each to district, state, national, and international competition in mathematics. Till now, every student of the class has appeared in 100 school level tests. The students had following distribution of marks in the tests, in terms of “average” and “number of times a student scored cent per cent marks”.
Ms. Banerjee has carefully studied chances of her school winning each of the competitions. Based on in-depth calculations, she realized that her school is quite likely to win district level competition but has low chances of winning the international competition. She listed down the following probabilities of wins for different competitions. Prize was highest for international competition and lowest for district level competition (in that order).
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All the students are studying in the school for last twelve years. She wanted to select the best team for all four competitions (Ms. Banerjee had no other information to select students).
In a new study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), researchers explored how caffeine can serve as a “mild anti – depressant”. They concluded that “drinking several cups of coffee daily appears to reduce the risk of suicide”. Data pulled in from three large studies in the US showed that the suicide risk of those who drank two to four cups of caffeinated coffee a day was about half of those who drank decaffeinated coffee or very little or no coffee. In the studies, a respondent’s caffeine consumption was assessed every four years through a questionnaire. The respondents were all adults, and the study was published online. The authors,however, cautioned the public from increasing coffee intake as it could result in “unpleasant side effects”. “Overall, our results suggest that there is little further benefit for consumption above two to three cups/day or 400 mg of caffeine/day,” wrote the researchers. The authors observed that there` was no major difference in suicide risk for adults who drank two to three cups a day from those who drank four cups or more.Which of the following shaped graph would best capture the above paragraph(x – axis represents “coffee intake” and “Y – axis represents “suicidal tendency”)?
Answer & solution
- A
A straight line
- B
Saw tooth curve
- C
S shaped curve
- D
U shaped curve
L shaped curve
Risk of those who drank 2 to 4 cups of coffee was about half of those who drank almost no coffee.
Therefore, the graph would be a straight line from 2 to 4, and it is falling to half its value from 0 cups.
Therefore, it will look closest to an L shaped curve.
Hence, option (e).