this quesition has been discussed for a long time over many GMAT forums

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.

a. movies—less than those
b. movies—fewer than have been
c. movies, which is less than those
d. movies, a number lower than the people
e. movies, fewer than the ones

Is B the correct answer choice

The "number of people" is countable and therefore "fewer" should be used rather than "less". Use of "have been" also satisfies the rules of parallel construction.

Please confirm the answer.

hi,RA

I don't know the OA of this question

it is a real GMAT quetion though


I chose b at first, but I think e makes sense as well. B seems to suggest that the seven people who have been killed by the white shard have been killed by bee stings at the same time. But one problem with e is the missing of "have been" , which distorts the parallelism

Can any tutor give some explanation on this one? thanks!

hii there,

e shud be the answer...
in option b ---fewer than those have been perhaps could have been a better choice..
i'm not sure though

e seems to me the right answer.
wat is the correct answer.

regards,
Apoorva

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.

a. movies—less than those
b. movies—fewer than have been
c. movies, which is less than those
d. movies, a number lower than the people
e. movies, fewer than the ones

I think correct asn is B
A - less than those, who those
B - correct
C - which seems to modify movies, which is incorrec
D - a number cannot be lower than the ppl
E - that the ones is incorrect

Please cite the source (author) of this problem. We cannot reply unless a source is cited (and, if no source is cited, we will have to delete the post!). Thanks.

_________________
Emily Sledge
Instructor
ManhattanGMAT

I confirm this question is from GMAT Prep.

Can someone kindly provide an explanation on the answer (B).


Thanks ~

OA is B

Less is wrong is A, C out

D compares number with people so wrong

E has 2 problems:
1- no parallelism (have been) with (killed)
2- "the ones" is ambiguous, is it "the movies" or "the people"?

B is ok

B is indeed correct. Good reasoning above.

Don't we need some demonstrative pronoun here to refer back to people, which is absent in B. Thus I chose E.

Would "fewer than those" be a correct answer? Please explain.


Also, can someone comment on the difference between usage of comma and hyphen in the options? When would each be correct or incorrect?

nope.

you can't use parallel constructions with "those"/"that"/etc, in separate clauses, unless they are EXACTLY PARALLEL to whatever shows up in the other part.

in this case:
you can't write "those killed by bee stings"
unless
the other part contains "people killed by the great white shark" (with NOTHING IN BETWEEN).
it doesn't, so you can't.

this is really annoying at first, but, once you get used to this completely mechanical mentality, you'll find that it's one of the easier things to do on SC.
if you are a "quant person", you should be able to do these sorts of eliminations very quickly, because they operate on essentially mathematical principles (unlike, say, idiom or awkwardness issues).


it's not a hyphen, actually; it's a dash. hyphens are shorter, and are used within two-part words (such as "two-part").
in this context, the dash essentially serves the same purpose as a comma. the only difference is that you don't use dashes at random; you use them when there is some special emphasis or irony (or both) in what you're saying.

example:
Joe, who is from Miami, complained about the cold of the Las Vegas winter. --> no irony; this makes perfect sense, since las vegas is much colder than miami in winter. therefore, no reason to use dashes.
Joe -- who is from Duluth -- complained about the cold of the Las Vegas winter. --> extreme irony, since duluth is about 70 degrees colder than las vegas in the winter.

same sort of deal here: there's considerable irony in the fact that the formidable shark has fewer kills under its belt than does the cute lil yellow fuzzy bee.

as a bonus, the dash also adds a degree of clarity, since "the great white shark" is already followed by one comma + appositive modifier; adding another modifier after another comma would muddy the waters a bit too much for my liking (and, apparently, for the test writers' liking as well).

Brilliant explanation. Thank you very much.

: )

I don't quite understand Ron's explanation
" you can't use parallel constructions with "those"/"that"/etc, in separate clauses, unless they are EXACTLY PARALLEL to whatever shows up in the other part "

Only seven people have been killed by the shark fewer than those killed by bee stings.

I am kinda confused on this .. Can someone throw some light on this

Thanks
Karthik

"THOSE (no verb) killed by bee stings" would have to correspond to "(THE) PEOPLE (no verb) killed by the shark".
this is not what the first part here says; the first part here says "ONLY SEVEN PEOPLE HAVE BEEN killed by the shark", which fails on two counts: (1) it has a verb (it's not supposed to); (2) you can't cherry-pick "people" from the construction "only seven people".