GATE2011 MN: GA-65

Question

Nimbus clouds are dark and ragged, stratus clouds appear dull in colour and cover the entire
sky. Cirrus clouds are thin and delicate, whereas cumulus clouds look like cotton balls.

It can be inferred from the passage that

• A. A cumulus cloud on the ground is called fog
• B. It is easy to predict the weather by studying clouds
• C. Clouds are generally of very different shapes, sizes and mass
• D. There are four basic cloud types: stratus, nimbus, cumulus and cirrus
   

Answer 1

Option A is wrong because nowhere 'fog' is referenced to any type of cloud in paragraph.

Option B is wrong because it is easy to predict whether from cloud but it is not referenced from given paragraph.

Option C is wrong because paragraph talks about the colour of all clouds but size of  only 'stratus' cloud. So, whether size of all clouds are same or different, we can not conclude.

But one thing is sure that all clouds are different type because at least we can differentiate them based on their colours .

So, we are left with option(D). D is correct because the passage talks about $4$ cloud types. 

Comments

But there may be some other cloud types its just that in the given para 4 types are mentioned!

so option C is more appropriate.

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@Pranavpurkar But sizes or mass of all are not mentioned. So we can’t comment anything on it. And specifically 4 different types of clouds are mentioned. Hence Option D is correct.

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Abhrajyoti00

yes , but i still feel that it is ambiguous . bcoz nothing is mentioned that there can’t be more than 4 types but yes among the options , D seems more correct.

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@Pranavpurkar

Option D: "There are four basic cloud types: stratus, nimbus, cumulus and cirrus"

you can classify anything in as many types as you want as there are many ways to classify also.
suppose, you want to classify clouds based on color: white, grey and black.
similarly, you can classify based on size: small, medium and big and so on, there are many ways to classify as long as you can find any common characterstic b/w all of them to compare.

So, from the given information we are inferring that there are four basic cloud types. there may exist some advanced or detailed classification but since it is not given in the question we can't assume.

Answer 2

Ans => (D) There are four basic cloud types: stratus, nimbus, cumulus and cirrus

Comments

why not c ?

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No idea really ! IT's official answer from GATE key !

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oky..