Quant In CAT Is Not Pure Maths !!!
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One may ask as to why such
questions in an MBA entrance. Very simply - because as a manager one must
exhibit good decision making capabilities. Tomorrow you may be standing with the
CEO
of a big petroleum conglomerate on a highway and analyzing a situation where in
hoardings of two rival companies are flashing and you have to take a decision to
exhibit your hoarding after a certain time interval. So one should have the
ability to apply his acquired knowledge in real life situations. Thus, CAT is
not a test to judge your pure subject knowledge as opposed to pre-engineering /
pre-medical entrance examinations, where the test is of your knowledge in core
technical subjects, but CAT is a test of your inherent smartness. How smartly
you pick some questions and more important how smartly you leave others.
Consider another illustration of
a CAT question - "Deepak starts from A at 10.00 am at a speed of 45 km/hr and
Sudhir starts from B at the same time at speed of 50 km/hr towards each other.
They meet at 10.11 am but keep moving till they reach at ends (Deepak at B &
Sudhir at A), then they turn back and keep moving. At what time do they meet
again?" The solution to the question can be found by different methods but what
matters is smartness.
Let us understand how this
question will be cracked by a smart CAT aspirant. In this question, speed and
distance are both irrelevant because the relative speed and the distance will
stay constant, only time is variable. So if they have together covered some
distance (whatever it may be) in 11 minutes, before the next meeting, they have
to cover twice of that distance, requiring 11 x 2= 22 min. So they meet at 10.33
am. This takes less than a minute but the conventional way will be to find the
distance with the help of relative speed and then find time, which will take
more than 2 minutes.
Performance in CAT depends
heavily on Quantitative Ability and it is not just CAT that needs good ability
in Quant - any MBA entrance exam you take has its own share of Quant.
Fortunately, the prescription is the same for all the exams - a good amount of
practice with high quality questions.
