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UPSC CSAT Tough Reading Comprehension 13 — The Difficulty of Learning from Success

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Sample Questions from UPSC CSAT Tough Reading Comprehension 13 — The Difficulty of Learning from Success

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Q1. Which one of the following best expresses the central argument of the passage?

A. Failure provides more reliable lessons than success because unsuccessful decisions are easier to investigate.

B. A favourable outcome should not automatically be treated as proof of a good decision; institutions must examine why success occurred and distinguish sound judgment from favourable circumstances or luck.

C. Successful organizations gradually become incapable of recognizing serious risks.

D. Outcomes should play only a minor role in evaluating the quality of institutional decisions.

Q2. Why does the author consider success potentially more difficult to interpret than failure?

A. Because successful outcomes usually produce less reliable statistical information than failures.

B. Because success can result from several interacting causes, yet institutions may attribute it too readily to their own decisions.

C. Because organizations generally refuse to collect information about successful programmes.

D. Because failure is always caused by identifiable mistakes whereas success is primarily caused by chance.

Q3. Which one of the following assumptions is most essential to the author's argument?

A. The quality of a decision cannot always be determined solely from the outcome that follows it.

B. Most successful outcomes are produced primarily by luck.

C. Failure usually provides sufficient evidence to identify every weakness in a decision.

D. External circumstances have a greater influence on outcomes than institutional decisions in most situations.

Q4. With reference to the passage, consider the following statements: 1. A successful outcome necessarily validates the reasoning that preceded it. 2. Repeated success in a risky activity may cause an organization to underestimate the underlying danger. 3. A prudent decision may sometimes produce an unfavourable outcome. 4. Outcomes should be completely excluded when evaluating institutional decisions. Which of the statements given above are consistent with the passage?

A. 1 and 2 only

B. 2 and 3 only

C. 1, 2 and 3 only

D. 2, 3 and 4 only

Q5. What is the principal purpose of the example involving a company launching a product before an unexpected industry-wide increase in demand?

A. To demonstrate that product launches succeed primarily because of market conditions rather than managerial decisions.

B. To illustrate the difficulty of determining how much of a favourable outcome was caused by strategy and how much by external circumstances.

C. To establish that companies should avoid repeating strategies that previously produced successful outcomes.

D. To show that sales forecasts are generally incapable of predicting consumer demand.

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