GMAT Question:- A recent review of pay scales indicates

[RonPurewal]

I am wondering whether "an average" in A is wrong?

419 times more pay than blue caller workers
so if pay of all blue caller worker is b then 420b/no of blue worker = CEO salary...is that what it means? This is absurd.

that number may even be an UNDERestimate.

In 2013 the CEO-to-worker pay ratio was 331:1 and the CEO-to-minimum-wage-worker pay ratio was 774:1
source: http://www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/Paywatch-2014

welcome to america!

in any case, in this sentence there's nothing else that the ratio could possibly mean. so, yes, that's what it means.

[rohit.manglik]

Hi Ron/Instructors,

I studied long back (unable to recall the source) that whenever we have "times" we MUST use some comparative words such as more than, fewer than, as... as.

I am not questioning Official Question, which is always right. I just wanted to check whether the above rule is wrong.


Thanks

[tim]

Here's a helpful hint: If you cannot track down the source of a "rule", pretend it doesn't exist. If you track down the source and it has not been endorsed by a GMAT expert you trust, pretend it doesn't exist. One of the most devastating things I see students do to their own GMAT scores is to apply "rules" that are not actually rules at all.

[RonPurewal]

Hi Ron/Instructors,

I studied long back (unable to recall the source) that whenever we have "times" we MUST use some comparative words such as more than, fewer than, as... as.

three times four is twelve.

my age is 40 years.
twice my age is 80 years.
three times my age is 120 years.

I am not questioning Official Question, which is always right. I just wanted to check whether the above rule is wrong.

i don't understand the blue part.

the correct answer is a counterexample. it does not do what your 'rule' says it should do.
therefore, the correct answer is absolute proof that this 'rule' is incorrect.

the first thing you wrote is 'the official answer is always right'. so, apparently, you accept that.

so, you know that your 'rule' has been PROVED wrong, but you still want to check... something. i can't figure out what that is.
what else do you want to check?
please clarify, thanks.

[sahilk47]

hi Ron,
what about "their" in C : 42 times their pay, is it not ambiguous pronoun. Whose pay? blue collar workers or CEO's own older pay??

Thanks a lot,
Tanya

in this case, it's quite clear from context that both figures are some integer times the blue-collar workers' pay. therefore, the pronoun is not "ambiguous".

in general, do not worry about "ambiguity" in GMAT pronouns, unless it is actually impossible to tell the meaning of the pronoun from context. (i will bet good money that this won't happen.)
the vast majority of technically "ambiguous" GMAT pronouns are just fine -- as long as their meaning is clear in context -- so you should ignore the idea of "pronoun ambiguity" completely.
not only will thinking about that idea make things more complicated, but it's a lot more likely to make you get problems wrong than to get them right.

Hi Ron

In this post, you mentioned that there is no ambiguity associated with the pronoun 'Their' in option C. Can you guide as to how did you determine the unambiguity of the mentioned pronoun.

Thank you

[Chelsey Cooley]

Technically, if you wanted to be incredibly pedantic, every pronoun that could have more than one antecedent is ambiguous. But in that case, you'd have to say that sentences like this are wrong because they're ambiguous:

Joanne complemented Janelle's purse and her haircut. (This sentence is fine, by the way.)

After all, how do we really know that we're talking about Janelle's haircut, not Joanne's? If you think that it's obvious, think about why it seems obvious to you. I imagine that in this case, it's because of the parallelism: we were talking about Janelle's purse, so it would be really weird if we were suddenly talking about someone else's haircut.

That's how the GMAT operates when it comes to pronoun ambiguity - it uses more of a 'common sense' standard, where if it's clear to a reasonable person what the pronoun refers to, you don't yet have a good reason to eliminate the answer choice. When it comes to pronouns, you'd be better focusing your energy on making sure that the pronoun has an antecedent in the sentence that makes sense (regardless of whether there are other possible antecedents that make less sense), and making sure that the pronoun and its antecedent agree.

[sahilk47]

Technically, if you wanted to be incredibly pedantic, every pronoun that could have more than one antecedent is ambiguous. But in that case, you'd have to say that sentences like this are wrong because they're ambiguous:

Joanne complemented Janelle's purse and her haircut. (This sentence is fine, by the way.)

After all, how do we really know that we're talking about Janelle's haircut, not Joanne's? If you think that it's obvious, think about why it seems obvious to you. I imagine that in this case, it's because of the parallelism: we were talking about Janelle's purse, so it would be really weird if we were suddenly talking about someone else's haircut.

That's how the GMAT operates when it comes to pronoun ambiguity - it uses more of a 'common sense' standard, where if it's clear to a reasonable person what the pronoun refers to, you don't yet have a good reason to eliminate the answer choice. When it comes to pronouns, you'd be better focusing your energy on making sure that the pronoun has an antecedent in the sentence that makes sense (regardless of whether there are other possible antecedents that make less sense), and making sure that the pronoun and its antecedent agree.

Thank you.

[rohit.manglik]

Thanks Ron, I got what you are saying.

I got too emotional with that so called rule .

Hi Ron/Instructors,

I studied long back (unable to recall the source) that whenever we have "times" we MUST use some comparative words such as more than, fewer than, as... as.

three times four is twelve.

my age is 40 years.
twice my age is 80 years.
three times my age is 120 years.

I am not questioning Official Question, which is always right. I just wanted to check whether the above rule is wrong.

i don't understand the blue part.

the correct answer is a counterexample. it does not do what your 'rule' says it should do.
therefore, the correct answer is absolute proof that this 'rule' is incorrect.

the first thing you wrote is 'the official answer is always right'. so, apparently, you accept that.

so, you know that your 'rule' has been PROVED wrong, but you still want to check... something. i can't figure out what that is.
what else do you want to check?
please clarify, thanks.

[tim]

Let us know if there are any further questions here.

[RonPurewal]

Thanks Ron, I got what you are saying.

I got too emotional with that so called rule .

interesting. well, there's a lesson here about 'getting emotional', then.

[KwakuA962]

Hi,
Could someone here clarify, why is CEO's used? Shouldn't it have been CEOs ???

Also, in C, the pronoun "their" causes ambiguity: it is not clear whether it refers to CEOs or workers!

Please clarify!

I think their here can only refer to blue workers. CEO's pay is singular and can not be the antecedent of their.

My thoughts.

[RonPurewal]

KwakuA962, why are you answering someone else's post that is more than 8 years old?

(also, in general, please do not try to answer other users' questions—that's the job of the moderators. thank you.)

[YuanhongR692]

It is still difficult for me to understand why B is wrong. If "a ratio" refers to "419 times",is there any problem to say "419 times compared to 412 times "?

[RonPurewal]

please read the entire thread (or at least read my posts). this has been amply explained in the preceding posts.

"...that compares to" is not at all equivalent to "...compared to".

[yihe_luo]

is B wrong because "a ratio" modifies "the the pay of blue-collar worker"? COMMA+NONE modifier?