Booklet Number: TEST CODE: PSA

FORENOON

INDIAN STATISTICAL INSTITUTE

ADMISSION TEST 2018

Questions: 30 Time: 2 hours

• This test contains thirty (30) multiple-choice questions (MCQs).

• The questions are to be answered in a separate Optical Mark Recogni-

tion (OMR) Answer Sheet.

• Please write your Name, Registration Number, Test Centre, Test Code
and the Number of this Question Booklet in the appropriate places on
the OMR Answer Sheet. Please do not forget to put your signature in
the designated place.

• For each of the questions there are four suggested answers, of which
only one is correct. For each question, indicate your choice of the
correct answer by darkening the appropriate circle (a) completely on
the OMR Answer Sheet, using black/blue ball-point pen.

• You will score

4 marks for each correctly answered question,

0 mark for each incorrectly answered question, and
1 mark for each unattempted question.

• All rough work must be done only in the space available

in this question booklet.

• The use of calculators, mobile phones and all types of

electronic computing and communication devices is strictly
prohibited.

STOP! WAIT FOR THE SIGNAL TO START.

PSAo
PSAo

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1. Let A be a 3 × 3 real matrix with zero diagonal entries. If 1 + i is an
eigenvalue of A, the determinant of A equals

(A) 4. (B) −2. (C) 2. (D) −4.

2. Let A be a 2 × 2 nonzero real matrix. Which of the following is true?

(A) trace (A2 ) is positive.

(B) A has a nonzero eigenvalue.
(C) All entries of A2 cannot be negative.
(D) A2 has at least one positive entry.

3. Let A and B be n × n matrices. Assuming all the inverses exist,

(A−1 − B −1 )−1

equals

(A) B(A − B)−1 A.

(B) (I − AB −1 )−1 B.
(C) B(B − A)−1 A.
(D) A(B − A)−1 B.

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4. Let A be an n × n matrix and let b be an n × 1 vector such that Ax = b
has a unique solution. Let A0 denote the transpose of A. Then which
of the following statements is false?

(A) A0 x = c has a unique solution for any non-zero c.

(B) Ax = c has a solution for any c.
(C) A2 x = c is inconsistent for some vector c.
(D) A0 x = 0 has a unique solution.

5. The equation of the tangent to the curve y = sin2 (πx3 /6) at x = 1 is

√ √
3π 1− 3π
(A) y = 4 x − 4 .
√ √
3π 1− 3π
(B) y = 4 x+ 4 .
√
1 3π
(C) y = 4 − 4 (x − 1).
√
1 3π
(D) y = 4 + 4 (x − 1).

6. Let f be a function defined on (−π, π) as

f (x) = (| sin x| + | cos x|) · sin x.

Then f is differentiable at

(A) all points.

(B) all points except at x = 0.
(C) all points except at x = −π/2, π/2.
(D) all points except at x = 0, −π/2, π/2.

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7. The number of real solutions of the equation,

x7 + 5x5 + x3 − 3x2 + 3x − 7 = 0

is

(A) 1. (B) 5. (C) 3. (D) 7.

1/x
8. The value of lim log x
x→∞

(A) is 1. (B) is e. (C) is 0. (D) does not exist.

9. Let f be a function defined from (0, ∞) to R such that

lim f (x) = 1 and f (x + 1) = f (x) for all x.

x→∞

Then f is

(A) continuous and bounded.

(B) bounded but not necessarily continuous.
(C) neither necessarily continuous nor necessarily bounded.
(D) continuous but not necessarily bounded.

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10. Consider the set of all functions from {1, 2, . . . , m} to {1, 2, . . . , n},
where n > m. If a function is chosen from this set at random, what is
the probability that it will be strictly increasing?

n m+n−1 n m+n−1
/mn . /nm . /nm . /mn .





(A) m (B) m−1 (C) m (D) m

11. Let {an }n≥1 be a sequence of positive numbers such that an+1 ≤ an
for all n, and lim an = a. Let pn (x) be the polynomial
n→∞

pn (x) = x2 + an x + 1,

and suppose pn (x) has no real roots for every n. Let α and β be the
roots of the polynomial p(x) = x2 + ax + 1. Then

(A) α = β, α and β are not real.

(B) α = β, α and β are real.
(C) α 6= β, α and β are not real.
(D) α 6= β, α and β are real.

12. Let {an }n≥1 be a sequence such that a1 ≤ a2 ≤ · · · ≤ an ≤ · · · .

Suppose the subsequence {a2n }n≥1 is bounded. Then

(A) both {a2n }n≥1 and {a2n+1 }n≥1 are always convergent and have
the same limit.
(B) both {a2n }n≥1 and {a2n+1 }n≥1 are always convergent but may
have different limits.
(C) {a3n }n≥1 is not necessarily convergent.
(D) {a2n }n≥1 is always convergent but {a2n+1 }n≥1 need not be con-
vergent.

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13. Let x be a real number. Then
 
lim lim cos2n (m!πx)
m→∞ n→∞

(A) exists for all x.

(B) exists if and only if x is irrational.
(C) exists if and only if x is rational.
(D) does not exist for any x.

14. Suppose x1 , . . . , x6 are real numbers which satisfy

Y
xi = xj , for all i = 1, . . . , 6.
j6=i

How many choices of (x1 , . . . , x6 ) are possible?

(A) Infinitely many. (B) 3. (C) 2. (D) 1.

15. A flag is to be designed with 5 vertical stripes using some or all of the
four colours: green, maroon, red and yellow. In how many ways can
this be done so that no two adjacent stripes have the same colour?

(A) 576. (B) 432. (C) 120. (D) 324.

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16. If a fair coin is tossed 5 times, what is the probability of obtaining at
least 3 consecutive heads?

(A) 1/8. (B) 1/4. (C) 5/16. (D) 3/16.

17. Let X ∼ N (0, σ 2 ), where σ > 0, and




−1 if X ≤ −1,

Y = X if X ∈ (−1, 1),



1 if X ≥ 1.


Which of the following statements is correct?

(A) Var(Y ) = Var(X).

(B) Var(Y ) < Var(X).
(C) Var(Y ) > Var(X).
(D) Var(Y ) ≥ Var(X) if σ ≥ 1, and Var(Y ) < Var(X) if σ < 1.

18. Suppose X is a random variable with P (X > x) = 1/x2 , for all x > 1.
The variance of Y = 1/X 2 is

(A) 1. (B) 1/2. (C) 1/12. (D) 1/4.

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19. Suppose X1 , . . . , Xn are i.i.d. observations from a distribution assum-
ing values −1, 1 and 0 with probabilities p, p and 1 − 2p, respectively,
where 0 < p < 12 . Define Zn = ni=1 Xi and an = P (Zn = 1),
Q

bn = P (Zn = −1), cn = P (Zn = 0). Then as n → ∞,

(A) an → 13 , bn → 13 , cn → 13 .
(B) an → p, bn → p, cn → 1 − 2p.
(C) an → 0, bn → 0, cn → 1.
(D) an → 14 , bn → 12 , cn → 14 .

20. Let X and Y be random variables with mean λ. Define


min(X, Y ) with probability 1 ,
2
Z=
max(X, Y ) with probability 1 .
2

What is E(Z)?

√
(A) 4λ/3. (B) 3λ/2. (C) λ2 . (D) λ.

21. Two judges evaluate n individuals, with (Ri , Si ) the ranks assigned to
the i-th individual by the two judges. Suppose there are no ties and
Si = Ri + 1, for i = 1, . . . , (n − 1), and Si = 1 if Ri = n. If the
Spearman’s rank correlation between the two evaluations is 0, what is
the value of n?

(A) 7. (B) 5. (C) 4. (D) 11.

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22. Let X and Y be two random variables with E(X|Y = y) = y 2 , where
Y follows N (θ, θ2 ), with θ ∈ R. Then E(X) equals

(A) θ + θ2 . (B) 2θ2 . (C) θ. (D) θ2 .

23. Suppose X1 , X2 and X3 are i.i.d. positive valued random variables.

Xi
Define Yi = X1 +X2 +X3 , i = 1, 2, 3. The correlation between Y1 and Y3
is

(A) −1/6. (B) −1/3. (C) 0. (D) −1/2.

24. Assume (yi , xi ) satisfies the linear regression model,

yi = βxi + i , for i = 1, . . . , n,

where, β ∈ R is unknown, {xi : 1 ≤ i ≤ n} are fixed constants and

{i : 1 ≤ i ≤ n} are i.i.d. errors with mean zero and variance σ 2 ∈
(0, ∞). Let βb be the least squares estimate of β and ybi = βx
b i be the
predicted value of yi . For each n ≥ 1, define
n
1 X
an = Cov(yi , ybi ).
σ2
i=1

Then,

(A) an ∈ (0, 1). (B) an = 0. (C) an = n. (D) an = 1.

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25. Suppose X is a random variable with finite variance. Define X1 = X,
X2 = αX1 , X3 = αX2 , . . . , Xn = αXn−1 , for 0 < α < 1. Then
Corr(X1 , Xn ) is

(A) 0. (B) αn . (C) 1. (D) αn−1 .

26. Let X be a random variable with P (X = 2) = P (X = −2) = 1/6 and

P (X = 1) = P (X = −1) = 1/3. Define Y = 6X 2 + 3. Then

(A) Var(X + Y ) < Var(X).

(B) Var(X − Y ) = Var(X + Y ).
(C) Var(X − Y ) < Var(X).
(D) Var(X − Y ) < Var(X + Y ).

27. Let X be a random variable with

(1 − θ) 1 θ
Pθ (X = −1) = , Pθ (X = 0) = , and Pθ (X = 1) =
2 2 2
for 0 < θ < 1. In a random sample of size 20, the observed frequencies
of −1, 0 and 1 are 6, 4 and 10, respectively. The maximum likelihood
estimate of θ is

(A) 5/8. (B) 4/5. (C) 1/5. (D) 1/4.

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28. Suppose X is a random variable on {0, 1, 2, . . .} with unknown p.m.f.
p(x). To test the hypothesis H0 : X ∼ Poisson(1/2) against H1 :
p(x) = 2−(x+1) for all x ∈ {0, 1, 2, . . .}, we reject H0 if x > 2. The
probability of type-II error for this test is

(A) 1 − 32 e−1/2 . (B) 87 . (C) 14 . (D) 1 − 13 −1/2

8 e .

29. Let X1 , X2 , . . . be a sequence of i.i.d. random variables with variance 2.

Then for all x,
n
!
1 X
lim P √ (−1)i Xi ≤ x
n→∞ n
i=1

equals

√ √

(A) Φ(2x). (B) Φ(x). (C) Φ(x 2). (D) Φ x/ 2 .

30. A finite population has N (≥ 10) units marked {U1 , . . . , UN }. The

following sampling scheme was used to obtain a sample s. One unit
is selected at random: if this is the i-th unit, then the sample is s =
{Ui−1 , Ui , Ui+1 }, provided i 6∈ {1, N }. If i = 1 then s = {U1 , U2 } and
if i = N then s = {UN −1 , UN }. The probability of selecting U2 in s is

3 1 2 2 3
(A) N. (B) (N −2) + N. (C) N. (D) (N −2) .

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