A transition question tests how the ideas around a blank connect. Cover the choices and shrink both sentences to what each says. If the blank's sentence has two parts, read through both to see what each adds to the writer's point. Then ask whether the writer adds support, shows a result, pushes back, or places events in time. Test each transition's plain meaning, because words that sound smooth can claim a link the text doesn't support.
Hints
- Hint 1
Start with the experiment and the whole sentence after the blank. Shrink each to a few words, keeping both parts of the last sentence.
- Hint 2
What is the job of the clause before the semicolon? Compare it with the experimental result, then ask how the words after the semicolon shape the writer's point.
Step-by-step
Follow both parts of the sentence
Step 1Shrink the experimental result
The experiments found that this informal process produced sets as uniform as the excavated ones. How were those replica weights aligned? They were checked against one another without central oversight, so uniform weights can arise without central control. We need a transition linking that result to the writer's response after the blank.
- Step 2
Read the blank's own clause
What does the writer allow before the semicolon? The writer allows that a central authority could still have imposed the excavated standard, but says the uniformity alone cannot establish that it did. Showing that informal checking can work doesn't rule out central control in the past, so the writer admits that possibility. The writer concedes: admits a point before returning to the main argument.
- Step 3
Test the other relationships
Would a result, an example, or a similar case fit? Accordingly means as a result, but saying a central authority could still have imposed the excavated standard admits a possibility despite the experiment, not because of it. For example introduces a case, but central control isn't a case of informal checking. Similarly means in the same way, but we're considering another way the same weights could have become uniform.
- Step 4
Read the admission in place
To be sure means I admit this is possible or true. Read it with that meaning: I admit a central authority could still have imposed the excavated standard, but the excavated weights' uniformity doesn't prove that it did. The phrase admits the possibility without treating it as proof. Choice B.