Numerical answer
Five sentences related to a common theme are given below. Four of them can be logically ordered to form a coherent paragraph, while one does not fit. Identify the sentence that does not belong.
1. Early cartographers routinely left large blank regions on world maps, honestly marking areas that had not yet been surveyed.
2. Over time, some mapmakers began filling these blanks with plausible-looking but invented coastlines and mountain ranges, rather than leaving the unsettling blank space visible to buyers.
3. Map buyers, it turned out, distrusted a map with visible gaps far more than one that appeared complete, even if the completeness was fabricated.
4. Modern satellite imagery has made it possible to survey the entire surface of the Earth without a single unmapped region remaining.
5. This preference reveals something durable about human psychology: an illusion of total knowledge is often more reassuring, and more marketable, than an honest admission of its limits.
1. Early cartographers routinely left large blank regions on world maps, honestly marking areas that had not yet been surveyed.
2. Over time, some mapmakers began filling these blanks with plausible-looking but invented coastlines and mountain ranges, rather than leaving the unsettling blank space visible to buyers.
3. Map buyers, it turned out, distrusted a map with visible gaps far more than one that appeared complete, even if the completeness was fabricated.
4. Modern satellite imagery has made it possible to survey the entire surface of the Earth without a single unmapped region remaining.
5. This preference reveals something durable about human psychology: an illusion of total knowledge is often more reassuring, and more marketable, than an honest admission of its limits.
Show answer and solution
Answer: 4
Sentences 1, 2, 3 and 5 build a coherent argument about why cartographers filled blank spaces with invented detail and what that reveals about buyers' preference for apparent completeness. Sentence 4, about modern satellite imagery eliminating unmapped regions, shifts to a different era and undercuts the paragraph's psychological argument rather than extending it — it does not fit the historical narrative the other four sentences build. Answer: 4.
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