Numerical answer
The five sentences below, numbered 1 to 5, can be arranged into a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper order and key in the sequence of numbers as your answer.
1. Economists call this the sunk-cost fallacy, and its grip does not loosen simply because a person is told about it.
2. A diner who has already paid for a large, disappointing meal often keeps eating past the point of enjoyment, reasoning that not finishing would 'waste' the money already spent.
3. But the money is gone regardless of what happens next, so it should have no bearing on the decision of whether to keep eating.
4. Studies show that even professional economists, fully aware of the fallacy in the abstract, fall for it when the sunk cost is personal and immediate.
5. What makes the fallacy so persistent is precisely this gap between recognising a bias in principle and resisting it in the moment it actually applies.
1. Economists call this the sunk-cost fallacy, and its grip does not loosen simply because a person is told about it.
2. A diner who has already paid for a large, disappointing meal often keeps eating past the point of enjoyment, reasoning that not finishing would 'waste' the money already spent.
3. But the money is gone regardless of what happens next, so it should have no bearing on the decision of whether to keep eating.
4. Studies show that even professional economists, fully aware of the fallacy in the abstract, fall for it when the sunk cost is personal and immediate.
5. What makes the fallacy so persistent is precisely this gap between recognising a bias in principle and resisting it in the moment it actually applies.
Show answer and solution
Answer: 23145
Sentence 2 opens with the concrete example (the diner). Sentence 3 immediately supplies the logical correction to the diner's reasoning ('But the money is gone regardless'). Sentence 1 then names this pattern as 'the sunk-cost fallacy', referring back to the behaviour just described ('this'). Sentence 4 extends the point with a surprising fact — even experts fall for it. Sentence 5 closes by explaining what this expert-failure fact reveals about why the fallacy persists. The referential chain (2→3: correcting the diner's specific reasoning; 3→1: naming 'this' pattern) fixes the unique order 2-3-1-4-5.
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