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Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.

  1. You can observe the truth of this in every e-business model ever constructed: monopolise and protect data.
  2. Economists and technologists believe that a new kind of capitalism is being created - different from industrial capitalism as was merchant capitalism.

3., Kenneth Arrow, the guru of mainstream economics, said that in a free market economy the purpose of inventing things is to create intellectual property rights.

  1. There is, alongside the world of monopolized information and surveillance, a different dynamic growing up: information as a social good, incapable of being owned or exploited or priced.
  2. Yet information is abundant. Information goods are freely replicable. Once a thing is made, it can be copied and pasted infinitely.

Entered answer:

Solution

āœ… Correct Answer: 2

Step 1: Look for the main theme

Read all sentences quickly -> Most talk about information, data, and intellectual property. One sentence talks about something else.

Step 2: Group related ideas

  • Sentences 1, 3, 4, 5 all discuss information/data and how it's treated
  • Sentence 2 talks about types of capitalism (merchant, industrial, new)

From passage: "Kenneth Arrow... said that in a free market economy the purpose of inventing things is to create intellectual property rights" and "information is abundant. Information goods are freely replicable"

Step 3: Check connections

Can you connect sentence 2's "merchant capitalism" to any other sentence? -> No! None of the other sentences mention or relate to merchant capitalism.


Quick elimination process:

🟢 Sentence 2 is the odd one -> scope-error -> talks about merchant capitalism which has zero connection to the information/data theme in other sentences

The other four sentences flow well:

  • Sentence 3: Creating intellectual property rights
  • Sentence 1: E-business models protect data
  • Sentence 5: But information can be copied freely
  • Sentence 4: Two competing views of information

Think like this: If you remove sentence 2, the other four make a complete argument about information and property rights. If you remove any other sentence, you lose part of the main argument.

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