Hello, Ron or any professor!

I just found about another question from the GMAT prep similar to the question we discussed.

To meet the rapidly rising market demand for fish and seafood, suppliers are growing fish twice as fast as their natural growth rate, cutting their feed allotment by nearly half and raising them on special diets

A) their natural growth rate, cutting their feed allotment
B) their natural growth rate, their feed allotment cut
C) growing them naturally, cutting their feed allotment
D) they grow naturally, cutting their feed allotment
E) they grow naturally, with their feed allotment cut

Why we cannot choose C for the better parallelism?
Are there some differences of parallelism between "fewer than" and "as fast as?"

Thanks!

to-meet-the-rapidly-rising-market-demand-for-fish-and-seafoo-t3622.html

the answer is probably on there already. if it isn't, then re-post your question there, not here.
thanks.

I have 2 questions about choice (D)

Q1: Is (D) wrong because it compares number with people?
- movies, a number lower than the people

Q2: Are following modified versions of (D) grammatically correct? (even though awefully lengthy)
(A) ...movies, a number lower than a number of people killed by bee stings
(B) ...movies, a number lower than a number of people that have been killed by bee stings

yep. a number can't be lower than people.




first, the obligatory warning --
don't try to fix sentences!
even though this section of the test is called, ironically, “sentence correction”, you do not need to be able to fix the sentences; you only need to be able to select the correct answer choice from the choices given.
trying to fix the sentences is an irrelevant skill set; if you do too much of this, it will distract you from the skill set that you actually need.

--

these sentences are actually a perfect illustration of why you shouldn't try to alter the answer choices yourself: they contain errors, but those errors aren't tested on the gmat.
first, "a number" is wrong; it should be "the number". however, the exam doesn't test a/an/the, so that topic is not worth discussing here.
second, in your (b) you used a "that" modifier to describe people. this is not ok; you have to use "who" instead.
finally, although your examples are not technically incorrect other than in the ways mentioned above, you aren't going to see sentences written like them. (the whole point of more compact constructions in comparative sentences is to eliminate awkward repetitions such as "number ... number" in the examples you've provided here.)

Hi Ron,

sorry if this has been already discussed. I am wondering if my understanding is right:

- fewer than (..the number of people who..) have been killed by bee stings.

My understanding is that the part in the bracket (the number of people who) has been left out as it is understood. Is my understanding right?

Thanks!

Your understanding is indeed right! :-)

_________________
Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor

Hi Ron ,

Can u please tell the reasons due to which choice E) is an inferior choice for this Question ?

no.
if you have a comparison between two different nouns (or pronouns), then both of them should appear explicitly.
since this sentence is a comparison between “guys…” and other guys, you have to have a noun/pronoun to represent the other guys.
e.g.
the guys on the basketball team are taller than those on the soccer team

If not please explain why?



the meaning of this sentence would be the following:
* there are three very tall guys on the basketball team
* more than three of the guys on the basketball team are also on the soccer team
that's the only proper interpretation of this wording, because the second half of the comparison is a verb (“… are on the soccer team”). that verb would have to be in parallel to the other verb, which is “are very tall” -- creating a comparison between (a) basketball players who are really tall and (b) basketball players who are on the soccer team.

this is probably not the meaning that you intend here, so this wording is incorrect.

sorry, looks like i accidentally hit “edit” instead of “reply” to that last post, so my words appear interwoven with the other poster's.

i am sorry that but just in this thread, Ron said that we could not probably regard this sentence as some kind of omission.
here is what he said"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.
"
so i am confused about the issue,please clarify my though, thanks!

ya, it's just a parallel structure. it's not an "omission".

at the end of the day, the distinction isn't terribly important -- in this particular case, at least -- because the more X than Y construction is workable with just about any grammatical forms for "x" and "y".
they can be...
nouns (i have more apples than bananas)
verbs (more people swim than run)
infinitives (i like to swim better than to run)
verb phrases (like the sentence in this thread)
entire clauses (birds like to sing more than penguins like to dance)
... and just about anything else under the sun. so, who cares, really, as long as you can find properly parallel structures.

if this construction followed stricter rules (= had to be used for extremely particular types of grammatical elements), then this sort of thing would become important.