Hi,

I would like to know the correct usage or the correct idiom.

Should we say "dated at" or "dated to be".

What is the context in which either one could apply ?

Thanks
:?

Hi Samy,

I don't know whether either of those is correct - they may be, but I can't think of any sentences in which I would use such phrasing.

The only idioms using "dated" that I can think of are:
X dates (or dated) back to Y: The popularity of the ferris wheel dates back to the early days of state fairs.
X dated to Y: The antique gilded mirror dated to the reign of Louis XIV.

If you have an SC question that tested those idioms, please post the entire question to give us the context.

Yes the sentence is:

Remnants of a meteorite that exploded in Siberian sky and scattered over 400 square km in and around lake baikal
has been dated to be 1.23 Billion years old and thus is evidence of the earliest known Meteor impact on earth.

A. has been dated to be 1.23 Billion years old and thus is
B. has been dated at 1.23 Billion years old and thus
C. have been dated to be 1.23 Billion years old and thus are
D. have been dated as being 1.23 Billion years old and thus
E. have been dated at 1.23 Billion years old and thus are

The answer is E.dated at is the correct idiom.

I felt the same too.

But the correct Ans is mentioned as C.
Here the process of dating the remnants is done by someone. Like saying - The remains at the pyramids of Giza have been dated to be 1000 years old. So here someone is doing the dating.

" Dated at" according to some experts is not an English Idiom.

Please can we have some MGMAT experts respond.

Neither construction is great, and both are unlikely to show their hideous faces on your Official GMAT. However, dated to be is preferable to dated at , which is always incorrect. In this sentence, my interpretation is "dated" is functioning synonomously with "estimated," which takes "to be" in its proper idiomatic construction.

-dan

As per this post

"dated to be" is wrong

http://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/arco-practice-test-q-t612.html

i've mostly seen 'dated to', followed by a date: 'dated to 5000 b.c.' i don't think i've come across either of the two competing constructions here, at least not anytime in the recent past (and i spend lots and lots of time reading nonfiction, including quite a few anthropological works that mention dated artifacts on almost every page).

so do we have a consensus on the correct usage ? 'dated to be' or 'dated at' ?

Thanks.

Please ignore my previous post. What I really wanted to know was whether we should reject the original answer i.e. C and consider option E as correct ? This is what the conclusion looks like from all the discussions posted.

so wait, what's the source of this problem in the first place?

idiom is a slippery fish and differs slightly from source to source (unlike, say, subject-verb agreement, which is a clear case of right and wrong except in the very few cases in which it's determined by rhetorical considerations). therefore, i'd be wary of taking idiomatic usage cues from unreliable or unknown sources.

also, we'll have to kill the thread if someone doesn't source the problem - or, at the very least, we'll have to delete all the posts that refer to the problem (we can keep the posts that just discuss the relevant issue but don't refer to the unsourced problem).