A logical completion question tests whether you can finish a text's reasoning from its clues. Read the words leading into the blank to see whether it asks for a conclusion or a limit. If the text gives several reasons for a warning, put each reason in a few words so you can join them. Then predict a careful conclusion that uses all the clues. Wrong choices often leave out a clue or claim more than the text supports.
Hints
- Hint 1
Go back to Mercado's point about which ledgers survived. Ask whose books were more likely to be kept.
- Hint 2
For a book that was kept, check what makes its text available to searches. Read the sentences about software and manual inspection together.
- Hint 3
Mercado separates random noise from systematic absences. Ask whether more pages from the same sources would change which records get missed.
Step-by-step
Trace both reasons for the warning
Step 1Find who appears in the surviving records
Surviving ledgers disproportionately come from large firms, while the books of small traders were less often retained. Mercado's warning comes despite its impressive size, so the blank needs a limit on what the database can show. Whose records are more likely to appear in this collection? Large firms do, because their books were more likely to survive.
- Step 2
Follow preserved books into searches
What happens to a book that does survive? The software recognizes standardized clerks’ handwriting more reliably than idiosyncratic scripts, and most searches draw only on machine-readable text. So a kept book can still be missed in searches if the software struggles with its writing, which can leave that business out of the findings. Checking samples for errors may catch particular mistakes, but that doesn't make all preserved records equally available to searches.
- Step 3
Test what more pages can change
Mercado grants that more pages can reduce random noise, or errors that happen by chance. Why doesn't that settle her concern? Pages from the same sources with the same kinds of writing keep favoring the same records, so scale does not correct systematic absences. We can predict that a larger database can still give an uneven picture of businesses.
- Step 4
Match both limits to the ending
Which ending captures the warning despite its impressive size? The choice with apparently comprehensive findings explains why a big page count can make uneven results look complete. Preserved and readily transcribed covers both reasons certain businesses are easier to find, while can makes this a warning about risk, not a claim that every finding is flawed. Choice B.