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.

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.

Ron I like all your explanation and for verbal they are the best out there. That is the reason I have left all other forum these days and visiting only mgmat, though since all other sources are ban here, only gmatpreps are of help :(

Coming back to this questions can we give this simple explanation here:

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

The simple explanation I am referring here, is the mother of all confusion here is the noun people is missing in second part of comparison, the rule book of comparison says(which rule book? shy) all repeat noun/pronoun can be dropped in the second part of the comparison (ellipsis...) provided they are clear from the context, since people is obvious noun missing, that should be acceptable.

What do u say, also is it possible for you to summarize commonly ellisized gmat q

i'm sorry, i don't really understand what you're asking me here. could you please re-phrase your question? or use quotes, or indicate in some other way the boundary between your own question(s) and the material you're quoting?

Ron, WOULD it be correct to have a comma, rather than a dash in answer choice B? In other words, can you have back-to-back appositives set off by commas (given of course that the appositive was correct, as in B)?

yes, that would be fine. such punctuation would, however, cause the sentence to lose some of its emphasis, and would therefore weaken the overall thrust of the sentence. i.e., the dash is used in this case to emphasize the surprising nature of the statistic published afterward; if a comma were used instead, that emphasis on the surprising nature would be lost.

although this is not one of them, there are indeed some sentences in which the dashes are required for comprehension. here's an example:

the rate of the reaction is affected by three physical variables, pressure, concentration, and velocity.
--> UNCLEAR (we don't know if "pressure, concentration, and velocity" ARE the three physical variables, or if this is in fact a list of six factors)

the rate of the reaction is affected by three physical variables -- pressure, concentration, and velocity.
--> CLEAR (in this case, the only reasonable interpretation is that pressure, concentration, and velocity ARE the three physical variables)

Hello Ron,

Can you please explain what is wrong with E, I am not clear why Ones is incorrect.

Thanks,

Vineet

first, i'm about 99% sure that we are not allowed to use "ones" to refer to people.

second, i'm also about 99% sure that "THE ones" must refer back to "THE some other noun".

Thanks Ron

yw!

_________________
Stacey Koprince
Instructor
Director of Online Community
ManhattanGMAT

Ron,

What does (B) omit between "few than" and "have been"?

In (E), is the part "movies, fewer than" acceptable? i.e. "comma fewer than" can jump over those middlemen to modify the number "seven"? I felt that dash as in (B) "movies--fewer than" can make the "fewer than" to modify the previous clause, but not sure about the "comma fewer than"

In addition, I want to make sure that I understand the appositive modifier -- the part "movies, a number" in (D) is acceptable, i.e. "a number" not necessarily modify the "movies" -- it is an example of "comma + abstract noun appositive" and can skip the middleman?

Any link summarizing modifiers that you can point me to?

Thanks!

i don't think that this can be regarded as an ellipsis/omission, since "fewer than ..." isn't a clause.
instead, like other comparisons, it's just a parallel structure:
have been killed by the shark
is parallel to
have been killed by bee stings.

note that these verbs don't necessarily have to be in the same tense; if context dictates, they can be in different tenses. for instance, the second half of this parallel structure could also be something like ...were killed in a single car accident this morning in Dallas.

comparisons are surprisingly flexible with regard to parallelism -- basically, if you can find properly parallel (and non-ambiguous) structures in a comparison, then the comparison is fine.



i don't think there are any grammatical differences between modifiers set off by commas and modifiers set off by dashes.
the differences are primarily rhetorical (i.e., meaning-based); i've tried to explain those differences here:
post38846.html#p38846

i don't necessarily think that those differences are testable, since they have more to do with rhetoric than with objective meaning; basically, i was explaining them because some poster asked about them, but i very much doubt that you are responsible for knowing about them. (when the gmat tests meaning, it virtually always tests issues of objective meaning.)



it seems that would be so, yes.


summarizing modifiers in general in a single link? nah, that wouldn't be feasible.
also, to be frank, even if i were industrious enough to try to summarize all of the main modifier types in some single giant post, that would also be a colossally bad business decision; it would essentially be the equivalent of giving away entire chapters of the sentence correction book for free. (:
the forums are meant as a place where specific, detailed questions (such as yours), about particular problems and specific concepts, can be answered; they aren't meant as a replacement for a class or textbook.

Ron,
Many many thanks for your explanations.

Here is how i attempted to solve the probem. I select the correct answer(b) by POE. Here is how i went about. Can you please validate my theory -

A.
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.

Kept this choice aside

B.
Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies—fewer than have been killed by bee stings.

Kept this choice aside

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

Possible refferents of which
[list=movies][/list][list=man-eater ?][/list] Both these referrents do not make any sense, hence C is wrong

D.
Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies, a number lower than the peoplekilled by bee stings.

Looks like a number lower.... is modifying movies. Since this does not make any sense D is wrong

E. Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies, fewer than the ones killed by bee stings.

fewer than ... seems to refer to movies. This does not make any sense, hence E is wrong.

Finally we are left with A vs B.
B seems to be better than A because of than have been. This seems to be parallel to non-underlined part of the statement
Only seven people this century have been . Hence i selected B as the correct answer

Is this a fair approach ?

Very nice explaination Ron. I really appreciate your efforts.

Coming back to this question, can I say -

Only seven people this century have been killed by the GWS, the man-eater of the movies, fewer have been killed by bee strings

no.
2 problems:

#1, that's a run-on sentence. if you split it into 2 sentences -- by means of a semicolon or period -- then it's grammatically legitimate.
Only seven people this century have been killed by the GWS, the man-eater of the movies; fewer have been killed by bee stings.

#2, this sentence means exactly the opposite of the meaning of the original sentence.
if you take out the "than" and write "fewer have been killed by bee stings", you are now saying that the # killed by bee stings (note "stings", not "strings") is lower. that's the opposite of the way the comparison goes in the original sentence.