CAT Questions | CAT Critical Reasoning Questions

The question is from CAT Critical Reasoning. Critical Reasoning for Verbal Ability for CAT. Critical Reasoning questions that appear in the verbal section of CAT test Reading Ability, Comprehension and Reasoning. Have a look at this question from Critical Reasoning. Solve CAT Questions from Critical Reasoning to get more practice and 2IIMs CAT questions bank provides you with CAT questions that can help you gear for CAT Exam .

Question 21: Take ‘the birthday problem’, for instance. It simply asks: how many people would you need to get into the same room in order to statistically assure that at least two share the exact birth month and day? Given that there are 365 days in a non-leap year, and that most people you know probably don’t have the same birthday, you might reasonably suppose that you’d need quite a high number to find an exact match. Hundreds, perhaps, and even then you’d be lucky to find two people with the same birth month and day. Statistically, however, you need only 23 people in the room for a greater than 50 per cent (hence ‘statistically probable’) chance of finding two people with the exact same birth month and day. For a 99.9 per cent chance, you need only 70 people.

Which of the following options puts forth the main idea of this paragraph best?

1. Often, coincidences are given a significance disproportionate to their relative commonness.
2. Coincidences can be explained by probabilistic and statistical reasoning.
3. Coincidences aren't as low probability as commonly thought.
4. Coincidences are bound to happen and are void of greater meaning.

Explanatory Answer

Method of solving this CAT Question from Critical Reasoning:

The 'birthday problem' talked about in this paragraph serves to highlight the fact that coincidences are more common and more probable than we think. Option C states this idea clearly, and is hence the correct option.

Options A and D are similar. They talk of the significance of / meaning attributed to coincidences. This is not what the paragraph discusses.

While it is true that the paragraph explains the probability of coincidences occurring, that is not the main idea of the paragraph. So, option B is not the right one.

The question is "Which of the following options puts forth the main idea of this paragraph best? "
The option is C

Hence, the answer is C

Choice C is the correct answer.