ASRB NET - Agricultural Statistics (and Computer Application / Bioinformatics)
India · Agricultural Scientists Recruitment Board (ICAR) · professional · unverified source
2381practice questions written to this syllabus
46subjects
Format
NET: one objective paper of about 150 questions, 2 hours, negative marking, online, Master's level (pattern as reported for other disciplines).
Sections
Agricultural Statistics discipline paper: probability and inference, design of experiments, sample surveys, statistical genetics, computing (expected to follow the AICE-JRF subject 68 units)
Over the years
Built from Laisha's knowledge because the official page could not be opened or was not found during research (web search quota exhausted); confirm against the body's current notification before relying on it. NET is the eligibility test for lecturer and assistant professor posts in agricultural universities. asrb.org.in refused connections during research, as it did for the earlier tracks.
Original questions written to this exam's published syllabus and pattern. Not past papers.
1. About which value is the sum of absolute deviations Σ|x − a| of a data set smallest?
The median
The arithmetic mean
The mode
The mid-range
Answer and working
A. The median
Σ|x − a| is minimised when a is the median, while Σ(x − a)² is minimised at the mean. Confusing the two properties is the common error.
Statistical Methods for Agricultural Sciences · Measures of central tendency: arithmetic, geometric and harmonic means, median and mode
2. A pathologist reports the mean disease score (0-9 scale) of each fungicide as 4.37 ± 0.21. What assumption does this summary make?
That the scores are measured on a nominal scale with no order
That the scores follow a Poisson distribution with equal mean and variance
That the steps between successive scores are equal in size
That every plot was scored by more than one observer independently
Answer and working
C. That the steps between successive scores are equal in size
Averaging treats the scores as interval data with equal gaps. That is often only approximately true for visual scales, so medians or rank and ordinal-model methods are alternatives.
Exploratory Data Analysis & Statistical Graphics · Types of data and measurement scales
3. Why does agricultural growth tend to reduce poverty more than growth in other sectors in low-income economies?
Agricultural prices are fixed by governments in all low-income economies
Most poor people live in rural areas and earn their living from farming
Farm incomes are not taxed, so growth reaches households in full
Answer and working
C. Most poor people live in rural areas and earn their living from farming
Where most of the poor work in agriculture, growth in the sector raises the incomes of the poor directly; this pattern is well documented in development economics.
Agriculture for Statisticians · Importance of agriculture, forestry, livestock and fisheries in national economies
4. Why is the formula (Σx² − (Σx)²/n)/(n − 1) avoided for computing variance in software?
It cancels digits when the mean dwarfs the spread
It is algebraically wrong
It needs two passes through the data
It cannot handle negative values
Answer and working
A. It cancels digits when the mean dwarfs the spread
Subtracting two nearly equal large numbers cancels significant digits; two-pass or Welford's algorithm is stable.
Programming for Statistics & Data (R and Python) · Algorithms, flowcharts and pseudocode
5. The range of an 8-bit two's complement integer is:
−128 to 127
−127 to 127
0 to 255
−256 to 255
Answer and working
A. −128 to 127
−2⁷ to 2⁷ − 1; 0 to 255 is the unsigned range.
Computer Science Fundamentals: Architecture, Data Structures, Networks & Operating Systems · Number systems, Boolean algebra and logic circuits
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