Question 7·200 Super-Hard SAT Reading Questions·Craft and Structure
As biostatistician Lian notes, the enticing regularity in the pilot study is ______: it surfaces only in the underpowered sample and disappears when the complete dataset is analyzed.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
For SAT Words-in-Context questions, first paraphrase the sentence in your own words, especially anything after a colon, dash, or comma that explains or contrasts with the blank. Decide if the missing word should be positive, negative, or neutral and what role it plays (criticizing, praising, describing cause, etc.). Then quickly recall or infer each option’s meaning and eliminate any that clash with the tone or logic of the sentence, choosing the one that best fits the specific situation described.
Hints
Focus on the clause after the colon
Look closely at the part of the sentence after the colon: it explains what kind of “regularity” this is. What happens to the pattern when the full dataset is used?
Think about the author’s attitude
Does the author seem to trust this pattern, or suggest that it is unreliable or misleading? Is the tone positive, neutral, or skeptical?
Check the meanings and connotations
For each answer choice, think about what it means and whether it could describe a scientific pattern that appears in weak data but disappears when the data are stronger.
Step-by-step Explanation
Understand what the sentence is saying
Read the whole sentence and especially the part after the colon:
"it surfaces only in the underpowered sample and disappears when the complete dataset is analyzed."
This tells you that the “enticing regularity” shows up only when the study is weak (underpowered) and then vanishes when more complete data are used. So the pattern is not real or reliable; it’s misleading.
Decide what kind of word is needed
Because the pattern disappears with better data, the author is criticizing it, not praising it.
So you need a word that describes a pattern as not truly valid, fake, or caused by a flaw in the data, not as strong or emerging or random in a neutral way.
Check each choice’s meaning against that idea
Go through the options and recall or infer their meanings:
- Incipient: just beginning to exist or appear.
- Stochastic: involving chance or randomness.
- Sturdy: strong, solid, or durable.
- Spurious: often used in statistics to describe a pattern or correlation that looks real but actually isn’t, usually because of a flaw or coincidence.
Keep in mind you want the choice that best matches a misleading, not truly real regularity.
Match the best word to the context
A pattern that “surfaces only in the underpowered sample and disappears when the complete dataset is analyzed” is clearly not a genuine, reliable finding.
- It is not just beginning (incipient)—it actually goes away.
- It is not simply random (stochastic), because it looks regular and “enticing.”
- It is certainly not strong or dependable (sturdy), since it vanishes with more data.
The only choice that describes a pattern that appears real but isn’t actually valid is A) spurious, so that is the correct answer.