Question
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in this sequence of four numbers as your answer.
Sentences
This habit of postponement, however, is rarely an admission of inadequacy; it is usually the
mark of a discipline confident enough to refuse premature closure.
Economists are often criticised for failing to commit themselves to clear forecasts, hedging
predictions with conditions that critics regard as evasions.
Physicists, by contrast, are admired for predictions of remarkable precision, but they make
them only about systems whose variables they can isolate.
A discipline that studies systems it cannot isolate must either inflate its confidence or qualify
its predictions, and qualification is the more honest path.
Detailed solution
Q22. Answer: 2314. Sentence 2 introduces the critical view of economists. Sentence 3 contrasts physicists, sharpening the picture. Sentence 1 reverses the critic’s framing (“This habit of post- ponement, however, is rarely an admission of inadequacy”), where the demonstrative “this” points back to qualification implicit in 2 and 3. Sentence 4 closes by articulating the general principle: a discipline that cannot isolate variables must qualify. The conceptual sequence is critique → contrast → reversal of the critique → general principle. Tempting alternative 2134 puts the reversal before the contrast, which leaves “this habit of postponement” without the sharpening that the physicist comparison provides.