PREPSC:babies were born to women

[nonameee]

Instructors,

when I read the question for the first time, I felt that (A) lacked parallelism. That's why I chose (C) (now I know why (C) is wrong).

My question is: When I see 'than', do I have to think of parallelism or not? Or do I have to think of parallelism only in connection with 'rather than'?

Thank you.

[agarwalmanoj2000]

Hi Nonameee,

"X is less than Y" and "X rather than Y" both need parallel structure.
Oil is heavier than water.
Oil rather than water is scarce.

A has parallelism:
over the age of thirty than under it.
"It" at end refers to "the age of thirty"
over the age of thirty than under the age of thirty.

[nonameee]

Am I right then that besides the problem mentioned by Ron several posts above, (B) has a parallelism problem?

[tim]

yes, you are right. i'd like to invite additional questions about this problem, but i share Ron's and Stacey's skepticism and am not convinced this problem is legit until i see a screenshot. i'm not saying none of you saw something like this, but i wonder if perhaps the question was transcribed incorrectly..

[nonameee]

i'd like to invite additional questions about this problem, but i share Ron's and Stacey's skepticism and am not convinced this problem is legit until i see a screenshot. i'm not saying none of you saw something like this, but i wonder if perhaps the question was transcribed incorrectly.

How do I insert an image?

Yes, you are right

Actually, I've thought about it and I changed my mind. I think the logical problem is the only one in (B). (B) is otherwise correct:

MORE babies were born to women over the age of thirty THAN [babies were] born under it [= under the age of thirty].

Words in brackets are intended words (ellipses).

Please clarify.

Thank you.

[StaceyKoprince]

You need to take some kind of a screenshot of the problem or whatever you want to upload - in some image format. Then you can upload the image when you post (look at the options down below the "message body" box when you're posting a new post).

On the parallelism issue, in B, the parallelism (with the ellipses, or implied words) reads:

more babies were born to women over the age of thirty than (were) born under (the age of 30).

Implying that the babies themselves were "under the age of 30" when they were born. Which doesn't make any sense because babies are zero when they're born, by definition. :)

[davetzulin]

Ron,

I was wondering if this is a legitimate way of attacking these kind of comparison problems. Maybe you alluded to this in another post where you mentioned eliding.


more babies were born to women over the age of thirty
____________________________than under it

the comparison elides everything up until the prepositional phrases concerning over/under age. it looks correct.

more babies were born to women over the age of thirty
__________than born under it


now the comparison tries to include the verb, but then immediately adds the prepositional phrase for the age right after. it misses the "to women"

all the wrong answer choices seem to fail and i'm wondering if i can use this on comparison problems instead of trying to find "meaning" flaws in 5 answer choices, eating up all my time.

[RonPurewal]

now the comparison tries to include the verb, but then immediately adds the prepositional phrase for the age right after. it misses the "to women"

all the wrong answer choices seem to fail and i'm wondering if i can use this on comparison problems instead of trying to find "meaning" flaws in 5 answer choices, eating up all my time.

i guess i don't quite get what you're asking here, because the example you've given is in error of meaning. specifically, the phrase "born under it" is incorrect because of the meaning that it suggests, i.e., the idea that the babies themselves are under age 30 when they are born (a statement that is trivially true, of course, but that is obviously not the intended message).

more generally, there seems to be a default attitude here of "i would rather learn 1000 different micro-rules than think about the actual message of the sentence".
not only will that kind of approach not work, but, in fact, the entire sentence correction section is designed so that that kind of approach will not work -- an idea stated more or less explicitly by gmac's head of research in the next-to-last paragraph of this blog post:
http://www.mba.com/mbacommunity/MBA_com ... -exam.aspx

[zhongshanlh]

Hi Ron and Manhattan experts,
i have a question about the comparison here.
here is a sentence i made up by myself:
more babies were born to women under the age of 30 than those born to women over it.

after making up this sentence, i suddenly realize that i may have made a mistake here.
i know that if we want to use "that/those" in a comparison construction, "that/those" should be involved in a similar construction as the antecedent they refer to.so in this sentence, if we want to use the kind of expression "those born to women over it",there must be some kind of construction such as "babies born to women blah blah blah" in the first part of the comparison. however, in the sentence that i made up, the first part is "more babies were born to women blah blah blah",that is why i think i may have made a mistake here.

am i thinking right??please clarify me and thank you so much!

[tim]

i'm not entirely sure what you think your mistake was, and i'm not entirely convinced you made a mistake here.. :)

[iswimfast]

here is photo proof for those skeptics out there:

http://imgur.com/DAYtv

[RonPurewal]

thanks.

[chedan-ing]

Hi！ instructors，
I "˜m comfused that when we dealling with this kind of comparision questions, how could we know ,which part does sentence actually compare ? most of the "comparing" sentences blur one of the two elements needed to compare. How could we distinguish which one it intend to compare? subject? verb?

thanks in advance.

[RonPurewal]

How could we distinguish which one it intend to compare? subject? verb?

determining the intended comparison is a matter of common sense.

[cnhelen]

more babies were born to women over the age of thirty than under it.

1) what is the complete sentence without omission?
(i'm always confused about those ellipses......)

2) C. than they were

the use of "they" implies that we're talking about the SAME BABIES referenced in the earlier part of the sentence.

i understand this, but how to correct this sentence?
in C, can I change "they" into "those"?