Question 100·200 Super-Hard SAT Reading Questions·Craft and Structure
Researchers comparing seventeenth-century municipal maps with tax records have found a pattern: the greater a district's expected tax yield, the more its mapped area was enlarged, with the same proportional rule appearing across maps made by different surveyors. Such distortions do more than generally reflect what officials valued; they ______ officials' administrative priorities, allowing the relative fiscal rank of districts to be reconstructed from differences in scale.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
For a difficult words-in-context question, determine not only the general idea conveyed by the blank but also the mechanism emphasized by the surrounding details. Give particular weight to clues showing whether the relationship is incidental or systematic, and select the option whose meaning accounts for every such clue.
Hints
Examine the consistency
Consider why the same proportional relationship appearing across maps by different surveyors matters.
Focus on recoverable information
Ask what it means that a reader can reconstruct fiscal rank from differences in scale.
Compare the verbs precisely
Distinguish among generally manifesting something, making it seem acceptable, revealing it, and representing it through a consistent system.
Step-by-step Explanation
Identify the relevant pattern
A district's mapped area changes according to its expected tax yield, and the same proportional rule appears across maps by different surveyors. The distortions therefore form a consistent system rather than merely expressing a general attitude.
Use the result of the pattern
The final clause says that a district's relative fiscal rank can be reconstructed from its map scale. Thus, the visual differences preserve information in a form that can be interpreted.
Choose the most precise verb
To “encode” information is to represent it through a system of signs or features. Because scale systematically represents fiscal rank, “encode” is more precise than a verb meaning merely to embody, justify, or reveal the priorities.