OG - SC - D43

[caa8q]

Hi all,

I may have found an error in the OG. I checked the official errata list and this potential error is not listed there. Because of that, I wanted to run this by you all.

The correct answer is (C), however, I think it has a grammatical mistake. My issue is with the phrase "who are women". I believe this is a noun modifier. MGMAT teaches that noun modifies must touch the noun or pronoun they are modifying. However, that means that this modifier modifies "law firms," which does not make sense. The author intends to modify "judges and partners". Because that is the case, wouldn't the correct way to write the answer choice be:

the proportion of judges and partners who are women at major law firms has not risen comparably

My proposed answer choice above does correct for the error, right? "At major law firms" is a verb modifier (correct me if I'm wrong), so there should be no problem placing this after the noun modifier, since verb modifiers can be placed with more flexibility.

Thank you for your help!

[tim]

Okay, three big things to keep in mind:

1) If you ever think you've found an error in the Official Guide, and your first thought is not "well, I must be wrong because the GMAT is never wrong", you are setting yourself up for a huge waste of time. You need to just ASSUME the GMAT is always right and work to understand why, not to prove it wrong.

2) Don't ever try to correct an SC problem. Even though it's called Sentence Correction, this is a misnomer. You should not be correcting anything, but rather just looking for mistakes. Many times, when you try to create a corrected version of a sentence, your new sentence will have grammar or meaning errors of its own, as is the case with your example.

3) Your interpretation of the touch rule is flawed. A noun can be followed (or preceded) immediately by two consecutive modifiers of the same noun, and this still satisfies the touch rule. Consider this example: "I have a shiny red car". Obviously "shiny" and "red" modify "car", but "shiny" doesn't TOUCH the word "car". Nevertheless, because it is adjacent to another modifier of the same noun, it still satisfies the touch rule.

[caa8q]

Thank you very much, your comments are helpful.

[RonPurewal]

first --
OFFICIALLY CORRECT ANSWERS ARE CORRECT!
do not question officially correct answers!
far too many students on this forum make the mistake of questioning the correct answers; please note that doing so is a complete waste of your time and effort. i.e., exactly 0% of the time that you spend posting "isn't this official answer wrong?" is productive, and exactly 100% of that time is wasted.

"is this correct?" is NEVER a productive question to ask about one of GMAC's correct answers -- the answer is always yes.
"is this wrong?" / "is this X type of error?" is NEVER a productive question to ask about one of GMAC's correct answers -- the answer is always no.

instead, the questions you should be asking about correct official answers, if you don't understand them, are:
"why is this correct?"
"how does this work?"
"what understanding am i lacking that i need to understand this choice?"

this is a small, but hugely significant, change to your way of thinking -- you will suddenly find it much easier to understand the format, style, and conventions of the official problems if you dispose of the idea that they might be wrong.

----

ok.

no, it's not wrong, and your suggested change alters the meaning into something unintended.
in fact, the OG explanation for this question (I can't copy it here) directly addresses this exact issue. check it out.

analogy:
The proportion of physicists at American universities who are women...
--> this would be the answer to the following: "Take all physicists at American universities. What % of them are women?"

The proportion of physicists who are women at American universities...
--> this would be something else entirely: "Take all physicists (in the world). What % of them are women who work at American universities?"

not the same.
the issue here is identical.

[RonPurewal]

weird... for some reason, when i first loaded this thread, only the original post was there; i couldn't see tim's response. that's why there are now two responses.