AWA 13

The following appeared in a memorandum issued by a large city’s council on the arts.

“In a recent city wide poll. fifteen percent more residents said that they watch television programs about the visual arts than was the case in a poll conducted five years ago. During these past five years, the number of people visiting our city’s art museums have increased by a similar percentage. Since the corporate funding that supports public television, where most of the visual art programs appear, is now being threatened with severe cuts, we can expect that attendance at our city’s art museums will also start to decrease. Thus some of the city’s funds for supporting the arts should be reallocated to public television.”

The argument in the memorandum issued by a large city’s council on the arts is unconvincing because its conclusion depends on several unsubstantiated assumptions of comparison of public television viewers and visitors to the city’s art museum, thus city extending support to the public television in view of cuts by the corporate. Each of the following areas merit further explanation before it can be given any degree of credibility of its conclusion of the allocation of the city’s funds to public television.

Firstly, the memorandum lacks data to show the relationship of the people viewing television programs about the visual arts and people visiting the city’s art museums. There is no guarantee that the same people who watch television programs on the visual arts also visit the art museums.

Secondly, the possibility of increase in the number of the tourists visiting the city cannot be ignored as the visitors to the arts museums too, thus, resulting in the increase of its visitors. Moreover, the government might have marketed the arts museums so extensively during the past five years that resulted in a substantial growth of the interests in the people visiting the city. One cannot also rule out the possibility of increase in the number of art students, which would have resulted in the increase in the number of visitors to the art museums, who visit the museums for their research and study.

Last but the not the least, corporate funding are generally tied with profit interests and hence, are most likely to support the commercial programs. One needs further data to support the claim that the corporate funding was directly responsible for the support and growth of visual programs rather than any other program on the public television.

Due to the many holes in the reasoning in the arguments of the city’s council, it is difficult to take the arguments seriously. Unless further evidence surface in each of the areas discussed above, the given premises are insufficient proof that the conclusion drawn is viable.

AWA 12

It is unrealistic to expect individual nations to make, independently, the sacrifices necessary to conserve energy. International leadership and worldwide cooperation are essential if we expect to protect the world’s energy resources for future generations.

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your view with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.

To analyze whether individual nations need to make the sacrifices independently or with international leadership and worldwide cooperation to conserve energy, one needs to first analyze the below mentioned circumstances on how the world can be currently categorized to handle such a delicate issue.

Firstly, the world can be divided into developed, developing and under-developed countries. Developed countries use enormous amount of energy to sustain their consumer demands and keep the pace of their economy on the roads of growth. For, example, USA consumes almost a quarter of the fuel energy resources despite having a very small percentage of the population of the world. Developing countries like India and China, have almost half of the world’s population, try to meet their ever increasing demand to catch up the developed countries and hence, are more resistant to adopt the changes necessary to conserve energy. Under-developed countries like African countries, lagging in technology and reeling under poverty can hardly feed themselves daily adequately, so it is foolish to expect anything from them. In such a scenario, it is tough to accept that these countries will make, independently, the sacrifices to conserve energy; rather they may try to be more selfish and conservative according to their environments and demands.

Secondly, with international leadership and cooperation, a unified code of law can be adopted by all abiding nations. These laws can later be extended to other poorer countries with the aid and hep of powerful nations to adopt their growing economies to the energy demand properly. Probably, the approach like that of CTBT and Nuclear treaties, that helped in bringing down the nuclear arms race among nations and enhance cooperation in the development nuclear technologies for the mankind like that of the electricity, can be very useful in conserving energy too. Additionally, to abide by such a law, the timeline should be appropriately decided depending on the state of the country like developed countries like USA can abide quickly as soon as possible while poorer African countries can be given sufficient time to abide, in turn not affecting their growth.

Though one cannot ignore the importance of conserving energy for our future with frequent alarms of global warming, the realistic way of achieving the goal is to have a unified global code of law, which every country has to follow within a certain stipulated timeline with the help of global leadership like UN and cooperation.

AWA 11

The following appeared in a memorandum from the business department of the Apogee Company.

“When the Apogee Company had all its operations in one location, it was more profitable than it is today. Therefore, the Apogee Company should close down its field offices and conduct all its operations from a single location. Such centralization would improve profitability by cutting costs and helping the company maintains better supervision of all employees.”

The argument in the memorandum from the business department of the Apogee Company is unconvincing because its conclusion depends on several unsubstantiated assumptions of the benefits of centralized operation of business. Each of the following areas merit further explanation before it can be given any degree of credibility of its conclusion of the failure of having field offices for its operations as compared to a single point of operation.

Firstly, the business department is not clear of being profitable while operating from a single location as it lacks figures and facts to support of being profitable while having centralized operation. In such light, one cannot ignore the possibility that even though the field offices were able to increase the profits for its regions, the bad management would have been possible for gulping the profits. Additionally, we cannot rule out the possibility of the bad policies of the company that would have barred the field offices of taking important and vital decisions of its own depending on the demands in the region.

Secondly, while one cannot ignore the possibility of global economy slowdown, in which case the results would have been same in case of centralized operation too.

Lastly, one cannot ignore the possibility of the bad staff recruitment at the field offices that would have been responsible for not being efficient. Moreover, it would be foolish to ignore the choice of locations chosen by the company for its field offices as various external factors like government policies, social boundaries, etc also impact the daily operations in a particular region.

Due to the many holes in the reasoning in the arguments of the business department of Apogee, it is difficult to take the arguments seriously. Unless further evidence surface in each of the areas discussed above, the given premises are insufficient proof that the conclusion drawn is viable.

AWA 10

In some countries, television and radio programs are carefully censored for offensive language and behavior. In other countries, there is little or no censorship.

In your view, to what extent should government or any other group be able to censor television or radio programs? Explain, giving relevant reasons and/or examples to support your position.

Censoring the television and radio programs for offensive language and behavior in some countries is a very delicate issue. The following aspects of it need to be analyzed properly before coming to conclusion whether such an act is valid.

Firstly, freedom of speech and expression is assumed to be a fundamental right in almost every country in the world. When people are not prohibited to protest against the system, corruption and governance, there is no reason why certain true aspects of the society cannot be depicted in the television and radio programs. Additionally, it is up to an individual to decide and judge his own rights and wrongs rather than being controlled as an individual can grow his identity more strongly when he acts consciously of his own.

Secondly, television and radio programs generally are close to the true depictions of daily happenings in our society. As an example, 70′s programs were based on characters like that of Godfather when US was reeling under the mafia and underworld. Hence, the fact that the depictions in the program are real or close to real, cannot be ignored.

Thirdly, moral involvement with the excessive depiction of sex and violence in the television and radio programs is one the reasons that those programs should be censored from viewing the minors and immature individuals. But then such programs can always be moved out of the prime time and can be instructed to be viewed under strict parental guidance.

Last but not the least; we cannot ignore the importance of the media in the spreading awareness in very sensitive issues like terrorism, AIDS, teenage pregnancy and sex. Because this is the only way that individuals can be made aware of the issues and problems of the world, which may wipe out our future generations, if not taken care of properly. So what if the attack of the Mumbai massacre was shown live on television for 40 odd hours. At least people saw and understood the empathy of the people caught in the brutal murder in the name of religion.

Hence, the television and radio programs should be censored but very carefully so that the whole goal and motivation of spreading awareness through communication media like television should not get jeopardized. Moreover, certain programs thought of being unsuitable for children can always be instructed to be viewed under strict parental guidance and can be moved out from prime time.

AWA 9

The following appeared as part of an annual report sent to stockholders by Olympics Foods, a processor of frozen foods.

“Over time, the costs of processing go down because as organization learn how to do things better, they become more efficient. In color film processing, for example, the cost of a 3-by-5-inch print fell from 50 cents for five-day service in 1970 to 20 cents for one-day service in 1984. The same principle applies to the processing of food. And since Olympic Foods will soon celebrate its twenty-fifth birthday, we can expect that our long experience will enable us to minimize costs and thus maximize profits.”

The argument in the annual report is unconvincing because its conclusion depends on several unsubstantiated assumptions of the food processing measures to cut costs and maximize profits. Each of the following areas merit further explanation before it can be given any degree of credibility of its conclusion of Olympics Foods being able to minimize costs and maximize profits.

Firstly, the comparison of the color film processing industry with the food processing industry has not been substantiated with enough data for their similarity of operation. There is no information provided from which we can conclude that both the industries can be compared to an extent that the trends can be compared directly. Additionally, comparison of food processing industry with color film processing industry in the current light of reasoning questions the credibility of the functioning of the Olympic Foods itself. On the other hand, the comparison with its competitor would have given a clearer picture of the market trends for the food processing industry.

Secondly, there is lack of data to validate the assumption that long experiences always help in minimize costs and maximize profits. In fact, there were instances where companies like Lehman Brothers with some 100 odd years of experience have gone bankrupt due to its poor corporate functioning and policies.

Last but not the least, there is no guarantee of an organization learning to be efficient in due course of time. Olympic Foods, being 25 years old, could not foresee its mistakes and then rectify it and thus, coming out with unaccepted reasons for not being able to maximize profits. This projects a clear picture of failure of its functioning.

Due to the many holes in the reasoning in the arguments of the annual report, it is difficult to take the arguments seriously. Unless further evidence surface in each of the areas discussed above, the given premises are insufficient proof that the conclusion drawn is viable.

Cool Quantitative tricks

Hey guys, lets look into some cool faster mathematics tricks, that we generally call as Vedic Mathematics. We will discuss some of them, which have application almost every time with examples.

Trick 1:  1/(<any_number>9) = ?

The condition here is the denominator ends with 9. Increase the digits preceding  by 1 and divide 1 with the result.

Example: 1/19 = Dividing 1 by 1+1=2 gives ) with remainder 1. Divide 10 by 2 gives 5. Dividing 5 gives 2 with 1 as remainder and so on. The final answer is thus formed with all the quotients, which in this case is .052 (up to 3 digits).

Trick 2: Multiplication with Base 10: Always remember that RHS has just the same number of the digits as the number of 0′s in the base.

Lets us multiply 13 * 17. 13 is +3 than 10. Similarly, 17 is +7 than 10.

13            +3

17            +7

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(13+7 or 17+3)20 | (+7*+3)21 = (20+2) | 1 = 221

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Trick 3: Multiplication with base 100:

Let us multiply 93 * 111

93                             -7

111                          +11

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(93+11 or 111-7) 104 |           -77 = (104-1) | (100-77) = 10323

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Trick 4: Trick 2 and Trick 3 can be extended to any number with bases multiples of 10.

Trick 5: Multiplication with something half of multiple of 10.

For illustration, let us say 50 as the base and we are multiplying 41 * 41

41                          -9

41                        -9

————————————————————————————————-

(41 -9)32 | 81 = 16 | 81 = 1681.

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Trick 6: Squaring

(Base is 10 here ) Square of 12 = (12+2)|(square of 2)= 14|4= 144.

(Base is 100) Square of 94 = (94-6) | (square of -6) = 88|36=8836

Trick 7: Multiply 2-digit number

ax+b and cx+d, where x =10. The result is (a*c)(x^2)|((a*d)+(b*c))x|(b*d)

21 * 43 = (2*4)|((2*3)+(1*4))|(1*3) = 8|10|3=(8+1)|0|3=903

Trick 8: Multiply 3-digit numbers

a(x^2)+bx+c and d(x^2)+ex+f, where x 10. The result is (a*d)(x^4)+((a*e)+(b*d))(x^3)+((a*f)+(b*e)+(c*d))(x^2)+((b*f)+(c*e))x+(c*f).

Trick 9: Squares of number ending in 5.

25 = (2*(2+1))|(square of 5)=(2*3)|25=625

55 = (5*6)|25 = 3025

The above mentioned 9 tricks should help in faster calculation in all competitive exams.

I am back

I will be going to be back for my daily Issue and Argument Analysis soon as part of my preparation. So do check out guys and help me improve them. You will see the first of them starting from in another 10 days once I finish off some preliminary rounds of preparation.