SC: Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1 percent in August, intensify

[gbyhats]

Hi Dear Manhattan Instructors :)

Is it safe to say that, in general, OG SC answer explanations are sometimes not specific enough? Most of time, the wrong answer is not only "wordy", "awkward" (what the book says), but also has mistakes that are clearly wrong?

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Regarding to Tim said earlier in this thread:

please understand that although OG *answers* are never wrong, their explanations for SC answers often are..

And what Ron said in another thread:

http://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/forums/sc-several-financial-officers-of-the-company-spoke-t13620-15.html

Worth knowing:

OG answer explanations are outsourced to writers with considerably less talent, presumably to cut costs. (The problems and answer choices, which are generally of impeccable quality, are NOT outsourced to cheap labor.)

If an OG explanation ever asserts that something is wrong because it's "awkward", that just means the writer couldn't figure out how to explain what's actually wrong.
Yes, seriously.

[RonPurewal]

Hi Dear Manhattan Instructors :)

Is it safe to say that, in general, OG SC answer explanations are sometimes not specific enough? Most of time, the wrong answer is not only "wordy", "awkward" (what the book says), but also has mistakes that are clearly wrong?

change the pink thing to "All of the time" and you're good to do.

EVERY wrong answer will contain at least one thing that is
... objectively incorrect, or
... objectively inferior to the corresponding part of another choice.

otherwise it wouldn't be a wrong answer. because wrong answers have to be, you know, wrong.

[gbyhats]

Hi Dear Ron :)

Thank you for your reply!!!

EVERY wrong answer will contain at least one thing that is
... objectively incorrect, or
... objectively inferior to the corresponding part of another choice.

Oops! Clearly I have a wrong approach in studying GMAT!

For all the wrong answer choices that I found no legit explanations, I considered them as "awkward".

I will no longer do so!

[RonPurewal]

yep.

"awkward" is pretty much impossible for non-native speakers (of any language, not just english) to discern reliably.

the writers of this exam go to great pains to ensure that the problems are not biased toward (or against) people who grew up with english. any question that depended on "awkwardness" would be anathema to them.

[GeorgiaF924]

Sorry to bump this old thread again.

I still don't know what the correct answer means. In my opinion, the correct answer means" the personal spending double a growth rate", but how a spending that is supposed to be a number doubles a rate? Isn't it should be that the rate of personal spending in the 6-9 quarter double the rate of personal spending in previous quarter?

Thank you!

actually, if "double" is a verb, then it can't do what you're describing here.

for instance, with respect to a certain video game, i can write "my new high score is twice my old one".
i can also write "my new high score is double my old one", though i'm not entirely sure whether GMAC would ever write such a thing (rather than "twice").
note that "double" is NOT a verb here. i don't know what label we can stick on it, but it definitely isn't a verb.

on the other hand, i cannot write "my new high score doubled my old one".
nope. i need to write "i doubled my old high score".

Hi Ron,
According to your explain, "double" should be a verb in the sentence "....expectations that personal spending in july-september quarter more than doubled that of the 1.4 percent growth rate....", because it doesn't compare rates of different periods. and thus doesn't work like "my new high score is double my old one". am i right?

Further, if "double" is a verb, then what part of speech is "more than"? is it a adverb phrase? I didn't find any similar usage of idioms on Manhatten SC (6th edition). Can you explain the usage?

Thanks in advance!

[tim]

"double" is a verb here. Don't think of "more than" as a separate part of speech; instead, think of "more than doubled" as the complete verb.

[ashish-mohan]

That is remarkable. We will have to revise our understanding of the usage of more, according to this problem. Good find; thanks.

Hi Ron, greetings! I went through this entire thread, but could not understand how this necessitated "revision of understanding of the usage of more". Can you please explain.

[RonPurewal]

That is remarkable. We will have to revise our understanding of the usage of more, according to this problem. Good find; thanks.

Hi Ron, greetings! I went through this entire thread, but could not understand how this necessitated "revision of understanding of the usage of more". Can you please explain.

in formal writing, it's surprising to see 'more than + VERB'.
specifically, it's surprising to see this sort of thing used as a verb. (i can't think of any obvious way to write it more efficiently, though—so perhaps it's just a compromise.)

verbs in comparisons, of course, are commonplace (e.g., More New Yorkers walk than drive to work). but that isn't what is happening here.

[JoyL321]

a.) "doubled" is wrong because it is past tense, the words "that of" are unnecessary.
b.) "would more than double" is correct as it is future tense

correct.

technically, "would" is what you get when you translate the future tense "will" into the past tense construction. it seems as though you know this already.
there's probably a separate name for that, because it's not technically the future anymore, but i don't know that name (if it exists).

c.) added comma changes the meaning of the sentence, "doubled" is wrong because it is past tense.

this sentence is actually ungrammatical.
you can't say "expectations of X(,) that it would do Y". that's wrong whether there's a comma or not.
the correct form would be "the expectation that X would do Y", which is precisely the form of choice (b).
if you're going to say "expectations of X", then that's the entirety of the construction; X must be a noun (or a gerund), and that's it.

d.) the words "that of" are unnecessary. (is using the progressive form "doubling" necessarily incorrect?)

former: yes.
see here for the latter.

e.) added comma changes the meaning of the sentence, the words "that of" are unnecessary.

the sentence is ungrammatical as a whole. see (c).
yes, "that of" is unnecessary.[/quote]

Hi Ron, still confused about whether the use of ''doubling'' is proper or not? Could you please explain that? And you mentioned in another post about ''of + noun + v-ing''construction. Based on that thread, choice D) seems appropriate.

Thank you Ron!