All India GMAT Group

Often it was believed that super intelligence leads to financial success, but a study by Malcolm Gadwall identified determination as the most important predictor of success. It certainly helps to be smart, but there are plenty of people as smart as Bill Gates who have achieved next to nothing. The study further concluded that there are aspects called components of determination that are more relevant than others, and more importantly, some of these components can be cultivated while others are innate.  One of these components – sheer willfulness, the desire to get something when you want it, no matter what – is most important.  Unfortunately, the study concluded that a good deal of willfulness must be inborn because it is common to see families in which one sibling has much more of it than the other sibling. Circumstances can alter it, but at the high end of the scale, nature seems to be more important than nurture. But a strong willed person needs to be disciplined and not self-indulgent, making discipline the second component of determination. Hence, determination implies your willfulness is balanced by discipline. This is because the stronger your will, the less anyone will be able to argue with you except yourself, and someone should argue with you because everyone has base impulses, but if you have more will than discipline you'll just give into these impulses and as a result end up on a local maximum such as drug addiction. Another important thing that the study concludes is that discipline can be cultivated, and in fact does tend to vary quite a lot in the course of an individual's life, and since determination is the product of will and discipline, you can become more determined by being more disciplined. The last component that the study discovered – another malleable one – is ambition. If willfulness and discipline are what get you to your destination, ambition is how you choose it and the fact that ambition is malleable means there is a lot you can do to increase it.  Hence to summarize, determination consists of willfulness balanced with discipline and aimed by ambition - fortunately at least two of these three qualities can be cultivated.

The author is primarily concerned with:

A

comparing and contrasting the roles played by intelligence and determination as a predictor of financial success.

Though the truism about Inuits having a hundred words for snow is an exaggeration, languages really are full of charming quirks that reveal the character of a culture. Dialects of Scottish Gaelic, for instance, traditionally spoken in the Highlands and, later on, in fishing villages, have a great many very specific words for seaweed, as well as names for each of the components of a rabbit snare and a word for an egg that emerges from a hen sans shell. Unfortunately for those who find these details fascinating, languages are going extinct at an incredible clip, - one dies every 14 days - and linguists are rushing around with tape recorders and word lists, trying to record at least a fragment of each before they go. The only way the old tongues will stick around is if populations themselves decide that there is something of value in them, whether for reasons of patriotism, cultural heritage, or just to lure in some language-curious tourists. But even when the general public opinion is for preservation of their linguistic diversity, linguists are finding it increasingly difficult to achieve such a task.

Mathematicians can help linguists out in this mission. To provide a test environment for programs that encourage the learning of endangered local languages, Anne Kandler and her colleagues decided to make a mathematical model of the speakers of Scottish Gaelic. This was an apposite choice because the local population was already becoming increasingly conscious about the cultural value of their language and statistics of the Gaelic speakers was readily available. The model the mathematicians built not only uses statistics such as the number of people speaking the languages, the number of polyglots and rate of change in these numbers but also figures which represent the economic value of the language and the perceived cultural value amongst people. These numbers were substituted in the differential equations of the model to find out the number of new Gaelic speakers required annually to stop the dwindling of the Gaelic population. The estimate of the number determined by Kandler’s research helped the national Gaelic Development Agency to formulate an effective plan towards the preserving the language.  

Many languages such as Quechua, Chinook and Istrian Vlashki can be saved using such mathematical models. Results from mathematical equations can be useful in strategically planning preservation strategies. Similarly mathematical analysis of languages which have survived against many odds can also provide useful insights which can be applied towards saving other endangered languages.

The Author’s conclusion that ‘languages such as Quechua, Chinook, and Istrian Vlashki can be saved using such mathematical models’ (beginning of last para.) is most weakened if which of the following is found to be true?

Though the truism about Inuits having a hundred words for snow is an exaggeration, languages really are full of charming quirks that reveal the character of a culture. Dialects of Scottish Gaelic, for instance, traditionally spoken in the Highlands and, later on, in fishing villages, have a great many very specific words for seaweed, as well as names for each of the components of a rabbit snare and a word for an egg that emerges from a hen sans shell. Unfortunately for those who find these details fascinating, languages are going extinct at an incredible clip, - one dies every 14 days - and linguists are rushing around with tape recorders and word lists, trying to record at least a fragment of each before they go. The only way the old tongues will stick around is if populations themselves decide that there is something of value in them, whether for reasons of patriotism, cultural heritage, or just to lure in some language-curious tourists. But even when the general public opinion is for preservation of their linguistic diversity, linguists are finding it increasingly difficult to achieve such a task.

Mathematicians can help linguists out in this mission. To provide a test environment for programs that encourage the learning of endangered local languages, Anne Kandler and her colleagues decided to make a mathematical model of the speakers of Scottish Gaelic. This was an apposite choice because the local population was already becoming increasingly conscious about the cultural value of their language and statistics of the Gaelic speakers was readily available. The model the mathematicians built not only uses statistics such as the number of people speaking the languages, the number of polyglots and rate of change in these numbers but also figures which represent the economic value of the language and the perceived cultural value amongst people. These numbers were substituted in the differential equations of the model to find out the number of new Gaelic speakers required annually to stop the dwindling of the Gaelic population. The estimate of the number determined by Kandler’s research helped the national Gaelic Development Agency to formulate an effective plan towards the preserving the language.  

Many languages such as Quechua, Chinook and Istrian Vlashki can be saved using such mathematical models. Results from mathematical equations can be useful in strategically planning preservation strategies. Similarly mathematical analysis of languages which have survived against many odds can also provide useful insights which can be applied towards saving other endangered languages.

The passage is primarily concerned with which of the following?

A recently published paper concludes that tenured professors or those on their way to tenure don’t enhance student learning as much as full-time lecturers outside the tenure system. Clearly, the difference between professors in the tenure system and other full-time lecturers has to do with the reward system for the former. The criterion for rewarding tenured faculty typically places a greater emphasis on research than teaching.

The above argument is based on doubts on the validity of which of the following statements?

New research shows that some marine organisms such as eels are facing a severe threat to their survival because of the increasing marine noise pollution. Researchers found that when exposed to acute noises such as those typical of large fishing ships, European eels reacted very differently to predator attacks; the likelihood of their response to an ambush by a predator decreased by 50% and the reaction times of the ones that did respond were delayed by as much as 25%.

Which of the following can be concluded on the basis of the information given in the above passage?

Recently, a plane crashed near the outskirts of Berlin within minutes after its takeoff from Berlin airport. Initial analysis confirmed that the crash was caused by either the usage of substandard fuel or a fault in the control board. Since the airport staff tested the control board before the plane took off, analysts hypothesize that the reason behind the plane crash was substandard fuel.

Which of the following options, if true, most strengthens the analysts’ hypothesis?