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Stat & Matic Odd One Out

CAT 2019 Slot 1 · Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension · Hard · Verbal Ability

This is a hard Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension question from the CAT 2019 Slot 1 paper. It tests Verbal Ability. The full answer key and a step-by-step explanation are below — try it yourself first, then reveal the solution.

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Five sentences related to a topic are given below in a jumbled order. Four of them form a coherent and unified paragraph. Identify the odd sentence that does not go with the four. Key in the number of the option that you choose.

  1. 'Stat' signaled something measurable, while 'matic' advertised free labour; but 'tron', above all, indicated control.
  2. It was a totem of high modernism, the intellectual and cultural mode that decreed no process or phenomenon was too complex to be grasped, managed and optimized.
  3. Like the heraldic shields of ancient knights, these morphemes were painted onto the names of scientific technologies to proclaim one's history and achievements to friends and enemies alike.
  4. The historian Robert Proctor at Stanford University calls the suffix '-tron', along with '-matic' and '-stat', embodied symbols.
  5. To gain the suffix was to acquire a proud and optimistic emblem of the electronic and atomic age.
Answer

2

Explanation

Sentences 4, 3, 1, 5 talk about the technical suffixes/morphemes ('-tron', '-matic', '-stat') as symbols attached to technology. Sentence 2 discusses 'high modernism' in abstract terms, which does not fit into the unified paragraph 4-3-1-5.

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