Sentence Correction

force5 wrote:thanks Brian. i have made changes in 2 sentences. Can you please suggest which one is better and do they mean the same??

(1) The prisoner's dilemma is a fundamental problem in game theory , demonstrating why two people might
not cooperate even if it is in both their best interests to do so

(2) The prisoner's dilemma is a fundamental problem in game theory that demonstrates why two
people might not cooperate even if it is in both their best interests to
do so

Hi,

I highly doubt that you'd ever see these two choices on the GMAT - there's a small stylistic difference, but both are essentially equal in terms of "goodness".

I would consider whether "is" is the grammatically correct verb for the last part of the sentence; since you're talking about a hypothetical event, shouldn't the final verb be "were" in accordance with the subjunctive mood?

(i.e. "even if it were in both their interests to do so".)

It looks like Stuart beat me to the reply (thanks, Stuart!), but I agree entirely with what he said. If I were writing I'd probably pick the first one but that's just a style thing, and actually I'd probably rewrite it differently, anyway.


A huge point that he brings up - I love the "what if" mentality of getting yourself to think like the testmaker and propose tweaks to questions and answers to get a feel for them, but remember that GMAT sentence correction is fascinatingly well-written so a lot of times that's just a hard game for us mere mortals to play when it comes to SC. I'd encourage anyone to really appreciate the subtlety in the difference between right and wrong on the official questions.

Thanks guys!!

Brian@VeritasPrep wrote:
-C has an illogical meaning, to - "problem fundamental to game theory" means that the problem is a threat to game theory, and that's not what the sentence is saying.

-And then B has the tense issue, so there are definite flaws in most of the other answer choices but not with E, so E stands above.


I hope that helps...

Hi Brian , can we say that B also changes the meaning by saying

even if it was both in their best interests to do so

It seems to be saying
It was both in their B.I to do so and something else .
It was both X .
It needs to be completed as
It was both X { and Y}

When You said -C has an illogical meaning, to - "problem fundamental to game theory" means that the problem is a threat to game theory, and that's not what the sentence is saying.
You mean the dilemma is a problem that Game Theory suffers from