2005 quizzes

  1. Sumedha's Adventure Quiz
  2. Raghu and Rao's Quiz
  3. Fall Quiz 2005 by Dinesh and Raghu [prelims]
  4. Hirak's India Quiz
  5. Ranga Quiz 3
  6. Hirak's Flower Quiz

 

Fall Quiz 2005 prelimes (by Dinesh and Raghu)

To view the answers select the coloured line that you see. The text is of the same colour as the background

  1. This is a brainchild of Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger and started on January 15, 2001. Sanger has since dropped out of the project criticizing Jimmy Wales’ approach to the project as being “anti-elitist”. The name derives from the Hawaiian “____ ____”, the name of the shuttle bus line at Honolulu International airport which itself derives from the reduplication of the Hawaiian word for “quick”. There has been lots of controversy surrounding the project despite its undeniable popularity. On October 24, 2005, The Guardian published an article, “Can you trust ______?” Another article said “The premise of ______ is that continuous improvement leads to perfection which is completely unproven.” What are we talking about?

    Wikipedia. Wiki is the Hawaiian word for quick. The articles refer to the veracity of wikipedia contents given that they can be edited by anybody.

  2. 2005 is the 100th anniversary of this truly momentous event in this area, so much so that 1905 is called “Annus Mirabilis”, latin for “year of wonders”. “Annus Mirabilis” is also used to refer to 1665-1666 where equally important events took place in this field. Give me the field and the events referred to.

    The field is Physics. 1905 is when Einstein wrote his papers on Special Relativity, photoelectric effect and Brownian motion. 1665-66 is when Newton formulated his theory of gravitation.

  3. First lines of which book: “I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, tho’ not of that country, my father being a foreigner. My mother’s relations were named ______, from whom I was called ______ Kreutznaer; but by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called, nay we call ourselves, and write our name _____, and so my Companions always call’d me.”

    Robinson Crusoe. Kreutznaer gets corrupted to Crusoe.

  4. He was born in 1906 and was a member of the Paris underworld. He was framed for the murder of a pimp named Roland le Petit and sentenced to hard labour for life in 1932. He escaped to Venezuela where he lived from 1945 onwards. He remained a fugitive from French justice till his death from throat cancer in 1973. His nickname is derived from the butterfly tattoo on his chest. Identify.

    Henri Charriere, author of Papillon. Papillon is the french word for butterfly.

  5. Following is an extract from a famous book: “Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of the domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security and in this, as in many other cases, he is led by an _____ _____ to promote an end which was no part of his intention. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it”. Book, Author and the blanks please.

    Inquiry into the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. The blanked out words are "Invisible Hand".

  6. The infinite series of the reciprocal of twin primes converges as was first established by Viggo Brun. The sum is approximately 1.9021605824…This estimate was provided by Thomas Nicely of Lynchburg College who also uncovered this other phenomenon concerning the primes p = 824 633 702 441 and 824 633 702 443. This has earned him much greater fame than his work on twin primes that he quipped, “for a mathematician to get this much publicity, he would normally have to shoot someone”. Since his discovery, other fractions with the same behavior have been found, most notably by Tim Coe who gave 4195835/3145727 as an extreme example. What behavior are we talking about?

    Intel Pentium bug. The Intel processor had a bug in its floating point unit that caused it to return erroneous values for certain division operations.

  7. Connect the following:
    a. The speed of Mercury, the courage of Achilles, the power of Zeus, the stamina of Atlas, the strength of Hercules and the wisdom of Solomon
    b. The wisdom of Lumiun, the courage of Elbian, the strength of Voldor, the power of Ribalvei, the speed of Arel and the stamina of Marzosh.

    Shazam and Captain Marvel from DC comics (from the first letters of the deities mentioned taken in reverse order). They derive their powers from these deities.

  8. This was created by Howard Garns in 1979 and was first published in New York in the late 1970s by the specialist publisher “Dell Magazines”. It was given its current name by Kaji Maki. The general problem is known to be NP-complete since it is equivalent to the graph-colouring problem. The “Dancing Links” algorithm by Donald Knuth gives the fastest way of solving the problem. The largest of its kind is a 275 square feet specimen, carved in the side of a hill in Chipping Sodbury, near Bristol. What is it?

    Sudoku. See Image

  9. It happened for the first time in 1014 AD when King Ethelred and his Norwegian ally Olaf Haraldsson attempted to divide the invading forces of the Danish king Svein Haraldsson. The lay was recorded in the “Saga of Olaf Haraldsson” in the following passage,
    ______________,
    Gold is won, and bright renown.
    Arrows singing,
    Mail-coats ringing –
    Odin makes our Olaf win

    The more popular version of the event probably refers to when Henry III granted the tolling rights to Queen Eleanor. Which event are we talking about?

    "London Bridge is falling down". King Ethelred and Olaf burnt the bridge down to stop the advancing enemy forces. The "My fair lady" in the song refers to Queen Eleanor.

  10. These terms came about from Johann Gutenberg’s use of two separate drawers, one above the other, to store the different kinds of letters. Enough said. What terms?

    Upper and Lower case letters

  11. A group of bored Europeans had a few too many Heinekens and decided to play an elaborate prank on the big companies of the world. This prank came to known as ___ ____, the second part referring to the number of beers consumed that night and the first part being either an unintelligible phrase or possibly one of the four hundred European slang words meaning ‘Is that my beer?’ – This is a famous person’s description on how this came into being. Fill up the blanks.

    ISO 9000. Scott Adams says thus in the Dilbert principle.

  12. At the turn of the 20th century, Paul Wolfskehl, a German industrialist from Darmstadt upon rejection by a woman he loved, decided to commit suicide. Being a passionate man he planned his death with meticulous detail. Having completed all the arrangements ahead of his midnight deadline he went to the library for some reading. Soon he was lost in German mathematician Ernst Kummer’s classic paper explaining the failure of two French mathematicians Cauchy and Lamé in solving a certain problem. Suddenly, he found a gap in Kummer’s logic and worked through it to correct that gap. By then, the appointed time had come and gone leaving Wolfskehl delighted that he had been able to correct a great mathematician as Kummer and lived to tell the tale. He promptly made a new will bequeathing a large portion of his family fortune as a prize for whosoever succeeded where the French mathematicians failed. In 1908 after his natural death, a prize of 100,000 marks was instituted to be awarded to the person who succeeds in doing what?

    Fermat's Last Theorem. Andrew Wiles collected the prize in 1995.

  13. According to legend, various names were suggested for this character, including "Chilly McFreeze" and "Ice Dagger", in order to suggest a ruthless, cold-hearted persona. A name was finally hit upon by the character's manager and then real-life wife Jeannie Clark, who advised him to drink his tea before it became ______________. What was the name?

    "Stone Cold" Steve Austin.

  14. Z was a friend of author-philosopher Ayn Rand and a proponent of her Objectivist movement, which, among other things advocated unfettered capitalism as a social and economic philosophy. He wrote articles for Objectivist newsletters, and contributed several essays for Rand's 1966 book Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal. Z studied saxophone at Julliard School of Music before moving to NYU where he got his PhD in Economics. In a BBC poll in 2005, Z was voted the 5th most preferred leader to run the world (ahead of Bill Gates & Steve Jobs) and is often called the “most powerful man you do not know”. After serving an unprecedented five terms in office, Z will be succeeded in January 2006 by an economics professor from Princeton, Ben Bernanke. Identify Z.

    Alan Greenspan

  15. This organization, founded in 1957 and headquartered in Vienna, Austria, was envisioned by US President Eisenhower in his “Atoms for Peace” speech to the UN General Assembly in 1953. It was headed by Hans Blix (the UN Weapons Inspection team leader for Iraq) from 1981 to 1997. It serves as an intergovernmental forum for scientific and technical co-operation in the peaceful use of nuclear technology. Which organization and why is in the news lately?

    IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency). The organization and its Director General Mohamed ElBaradei were awarded the 2005 Nobel peace prize.

  16. The visual shows the Sullivan brothers who all served aboard the light cruiser USS Juneau. They enlisted on January 3, 1942 with the stipulation that they serve together. In November, the ship was struck twice by Japanese torpedoes and quickly sank. All the brothers lost their lives in the incident. What was a direct outcome of this event?

    The Sole Survivor policy of the US armed forces which is what the movie "Saving Private Ryan" is based on.

  17. Identify this woman.

    Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her seat to a white person sparked off the civil rights movement. Shown in the visual is an old Rosa Parks sitting in a replica of the bus used at that time in Montgomery, Alabama.

  18. Identify the place.

    Forbidden city, Beijing.

  19. Tatawin is a city in Southern Tunisia which is famous for its abandoned Berber settlements including the picturesque Ksar Ouled Sultane shown in the visual. Also in 1931, a meteorite impacted here of which about 12 kg of fragments were found. But this place’s principal claim to fame is that a Hollywood movie was shot here. Which one?

    Star Wars. George Lucas named Luke's home planet Tatooine as a homage to this place. Buildings like the one shown in the visual figure prominently in "The phantom menace".

  20. ‘Yakka foob mog. Grug pubbawup zink wattoom gazork. Chumble spuzz’ – Who explaining what?

    Calvin, the boy genius on being asked to explain Newton's first law "in his own words" :)