can somebody help me out with this question?

[summer]

this quesition has been discussed for a long time over many GMAT forums

Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies"”less than those killed by bee stings.

a. movies--less than those
b. movies--fewer than have been
c. movies, which is less than those
d. movies, a number lower than the people
e. movies, fewer than the ones

[RA]

Is B the correct answer choice

The "number of people" is countable and therefore "fewer" should be used rather than "less". Use of "have been" also satisfies the rules of parallel construction.

Please confirm the answer.

[summer]

hi,RA

I don't know the OA of this question

it is a real GMAT quetion though


I chose b at first, but I think e makes sense as well. B seems to suggest that the seven people who have been killed by the white shard have been killed by bee stings at the same time. But one problem with e is the missing of "have been" , which distorts the parallelism

Can any tutor give some explanation on this one? thanks!

[Guest]

hii there,

e shud be the answer...
in option b ---fewer than those have been perhaps could have been a better choice..
i'm not sure though

e seems to me the right answer.
wat is the correct answer.

regards,
Apoorva

[Guest]

Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies"”less than those killed by bee stings.

a. movies"”less than those
b. movies"”fewer than have been
c. movies, which is less than those
d. movies, a number lower than the people
e. movies, fewer than the ones

I think correct asn is B
A - less than those, who those
B - correct
C - which seems to modify movies, which is incorrec
D - a number cannot be lower than the ppl
E - that the ones is incorrect

[esledge]

Please cite the source (author) of this problem. We cannot reply unless a source is cited (and, if no source is cited, we will have to delete the post!). Thanks.

[Guest]

I confirm this question is from GMAT Prep.

Can someone kindly provide an explanation on the answer (B).


Thanks ~

[Guest]

OA is B

Less is wrong is A, C out

D compares number with people so wrong

E has 2 problems:
1- no parallelism (have been) with (killed)
2- "the ones" is ambiguous, is it "the movies" or "the people"?

B is ok

[JonathanSchneider]

B is indeed correct. Good reasoning above.

[nash.avi]

Don't we need some demonstrative pronoun here to refer back to people, which is absent in B. Thus I chose E.

Would "fewer than those" be a correct answer? Please explain.


Also, can someone comment on the difference between usage of comma and hyphen in the options? When would each be correct or incorrect?

[RonPurewal]

Don't we need some demonstrative pronoun here to refer back to people, which is absent in B. Thus I chose E.

Would "fewer than those" be a correct answer? Please explain.

[this post has been edited from the original version]

when you consider parallel constructions, your main goal is just to pick the choice with the best parallelism.
if you were a writer, then you would need all kinds of subtle intuition about this kind of thing -- because writers don't get multiple-choice options!
but you get multiple-choice options, so we needn't complicate the issue any more than necessary.

in the correct answer, we have "have been killed by x" and "have been killed by y".
perfect.
you really aren't going to do any better than that!

in the choice with "those killed by bee stings" -- note that we don't have "people killed by the great white shark" in the other part.

this is really annoying at first, but, once you get used to this mentality, you'll find that it's one of the easier things to do on SC.
if you are a "quant person", you should be able to do these sorts of eliminations very quickly, because they operate on essentially mathematical principles (unlike, say, idiom or modifier issues).

Also, can someone comment on the difference between usage of comma and hyphen in the options? When would each be correct or incorrect?

it's not a hyphen, actually; it's a dash. hyphens are shorter, and are used within two-part words (such as "two-part").
in this context, the dash essentially serves the same purpose as a comma. the only difference is that you don't use dashes at random; you use them when there is some special emphasis or irony (or both) in what you're saying.

example:
Joe, who is from Miami, complained about the cold of the Las Vegas winter. --> no irony; this makes perfect sense, since las vegas is much colder than miami in winter. therefore, no reason to use dashes.
Joe -- who is from Duluth -- complained about the cold of the Las Vegas winter. --> extreme irony, since duluth is about 70 degrees colder than las vegas in the winter.

same sort of deal here: there's considerable irony in the fact that the formidable shark has fewer kills under its belt than does the cute lil yellow fuzzy bee.

as a bonus, the dash also adds a degree of clarity, since "the great white shark" is already followed by one comma + appositive modifier; adding another modifier after another comma would muddy the waters a bit too much for my liking (and, apparently, for the test writers' liking as well).

[nash.avi]

Brilliant explanation. Thank you very much.

[JonathanSchneider]

: )

[sonu_gmat]

Ron,

I’m having little trouble to get this thing. Every time I see this one option E first comes to mind because of the below mentioned problem.

1. When you say the above parallelism I guess the sentence structure should be

People killed by G.W.S are fewer than those killed by bee stings.

So here we must use 'that'. Without "˜that’ the sentence is wrong.
Except the above structure we can not use "˜that/those’.

In the below problem we need to use "˜that’ to refer the income. Is this because "˜income’ is not the subject of the main sentence?

X is Y’s poorest state, with an annual per capita income of $$$$, lower than in the most impoverished countries of the world.
b) lower than that of

Please explain how to deal with such comparison problems.

[RonPurewal]

good call. i know the problem to which you're making an analogy here (it's the bihar problem from OG).

i guess "that of" has a little more leeway in the exact parallelism department.
i.e. you can put "that OF" or "those OF" in parallel to anything that suggests a possessive structure. or at least that's what we learn from this problem...

in any case, you can't use "IN any other...", because there's nothing to which the preposition IN can be parallel.