View a FREE sample

This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What were the Tripos?
(a) Physical evaluations.
(b) Oral exams.
(c) Written exams.
(d) A secret society.

2. What was Ramanujan's religion?
(a) Muslim.
(b) Confucian.
(c) Tamil.
(d) Hindu.

3. Which god was Ramanujan's family devoted to?
(a) Shakti.
(b) Ganesha.
(c) Vishnu.
(d) Shiva.

4. Who was Komalatammal?
(a) Ramanujan's teacher.
(b) Ramanujan's aunt.
(c) Ramanujan's mother.
(d) Ramanujan's sister.

5. What were Ramanujan's parents getting impatient with?
(a) Ramanujan's failure to win prizes.
(b) Ramanujan's scribbling in notebooks.
(c) Ramanujan's sloth.
(d) Ramanujan's insubordination.

6. Who were the Senior Wranglers?
(a) Students who played rugby or soccer/football.
(b) Students who struggled.
(c) Academic celebrities.
(d) Students whose parents could not afford school on their own.

7. How does Kanigel describe education at Hardy's college?
(a) Students followed their own inclination in study.
(b) Students worked together to make presentations to tutors.
(c) Students took a ferocious load of classes.
(d) Students worked with tutors instead of taking classes.

8. How does Kanigel describe Ramanujan as a potential husband?
(a) Undesirable.
(b) Appealing.
(c) Uninteresting.
(d) Frightful.

9. How does Kanigel characterize Ramanujan's solutions to the math problems in 'A Synopsis of Elementary Results in Pure and Applied Mathematics'?
(a) As odd.
(b) As flawless.
(c) As inconsistent.
(d) As frequently wrong.

10. Why did Hardy need to excel on the entrance exams for secondary education?
(a) He would have low status at school if his test scores were low.
(b) Admissions were extremely competitive.
(c) His family could not afford the best schools.
(d) Testing was the sole criterion for admission.

11. What interrupted Ramanujan's wedding?
(a) A fight.
(b) Objections from the girl's family.
(c) Drunken relatives.
(d) A deranged woman.

12. Where did families NOT look for wives for their sons in India in Ramanujan's time?
(a) Prominent villagers.
(b) Friends of the family.
(c) Neighbors.
(d) Extended family.

13. What did Ramanujan's parents do in response to their impatience?
(a) Send him to school.
(b) Apprentice him to a designer.
(c) Buy him a bureaucratic appointment.
(d) Marry him off.

14. Where did Ramanujan's parents find a wife for him?
(a) Uttar Pradesh.
(b) A nearby village.
(c) An orphanage.
(d) Madras.

15. Why was Ramanujan's scholarship changed?
(a) Because of his womanizing.
(b) Because he neglected his studies aside from math.
(c) Because of his rowdy behavior.
(d) Because of his progress in all his fields.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was G. H. Hardy's status in Britain?

2. Who gave Ramanujan money to study in Madras?

3. What did Ramanujan need to do now that he was married?

4. Where did Hardy attend college?

5. What is a nested square root?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 446 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample