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by gmatapril » Fri Feb 25, 2011 8:03 am
Compared to the Roman emperors who preceded him, Claudius was involved in the day-to-day workings of the unusual judicial system and took a personal interest in the law, settling disputes as far away as Alexandria, Rhodes, and Troy.
(A) was involved in the day-to-day workings of the unusual judicial system and took a personal interest in the law, settling
(B) was unusually involved in the workings of the day-to-day judicial system, taking a personal interest in settling
(C) was involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system, took an unusually personal interest in the law, and settled
(D) was unusually involved in the workings of the day-to-day judicial system and took a personal interest in settling
(E) was unusually involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system, taking a personal interest in the law and settling
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by maihuna » Fri Feb 25, 2011 8:16 am
IMO:A

after interest in law, there is a continuation looking for example, so and settled, in settling, and settling, are all wrong.

B,D, E unusually involve, and took are not parallel as in one construction is additional adjective.

C : Wrong parallelism, was involved, took, and settled doesn't require such combination as for one the settling is not main part of comparison, it is arising as a need to give example. Further settledis a wrong construction given the context.
gmatapril wrote:Compared to the Roman emperors who preceded him, Claudius was involved in the day-to-day workings of the unusual judicial system and took a personal interest in the law, settling disputes as far away as Alexandria, Rhodes, and Troy.
(A) was involved in the day-to-day workings of the unusual judicial system and took a personal interest in the law, settling
(B) was unusually involved in the workings of the day-to-day judicial system, taking a personal interest in settling
(C) was involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system, took an unusually personal interest in the law, and settled
(D) was unusually involved in the workings of the day-to-day judicial system and took a personal interest in settling
(E) was unusually involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system, taking a personal interest in the law and settling
Charged up again to beat the beast :)
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by HSPA » Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:30 am
Hello Maihuna,

How is it A.. what is this "unusual judical system"...Kindly recheck into C, E
Last edited by HSPA on Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:35 am, edited 2 times in total.
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by tetura84 » Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:31 am
gmatapril wrote:Compared to the Roman emperors who preceded him, Claudius was involved in the day-to-day workings of the unusual judicial system and took a personal interest in the law, settling disputes as far away as Alexandria, Rhodes, and Troy.
(A) was involved in the day-to-day workings of the unusual judicial system and took a personal interest in the law, settling
(B) was unusually involved in the workings of the day-to-day judicial system, taking a personal interest in settling
(C) was involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system, took an unusually personal interest in the law, and settled
(D) was unusually involved in the workings of the day-to-day judicial system and took a personal interest in settling
(E) was unusually involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system, taking a personal interest in the law and settling
IMO E

A. unusual judicial system = doesn't look good to me. Also, settling = ing-modifier preceded by comma, this modifier modifies the entire previous clause and, this is wrong
B. day-to-day judicial system
C. COMMA + AND = coordinating conjunction, each of the clauses should be independent. This option would work if there were no COMMA(IMO)
D. day-to-day system
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by gmatmachoman » Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:45 am
gmatapril wrote:Compared to the Roman emperors who preceded him, Claudius was involved in the day-to-day workings of the unusual judicial system and took a personal interest in the law, settling disputes as far away as Alexandria, Rhodes, and Troy.
(A) was involved in the day-to-day workings of the unusual judicial system and took a personal interest in the law, settling
(B) was unusually involved in the workings of the day-to-day judicial system, taking a personal interest in settling
(C) was involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system, took an unusually personal interest in the law, and settled
(D) was unusually involved in the workings of the day-to-day judicial system and took a personal interest in settling
(E) was unusually involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system, taking a personal interest in the law and settling
This one resembles me of the OG 12 SC 94 where Parallelism in participle phrases is tested.

E is correct as explained by GMAT pill!
Last edited by gmatmachoman on Fri Feb 25, 2011 10:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by gmatpill » Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:45 am
Answer is E. (Answer arrived in < 25 seconds)
gmatapril wrote:Compared to the Roman emperors who preceded him, Claudius was involved in the day-to-day workings of the unusual judicial system and took a personal interest in the law, settling disputes as far away as Alexandria, Rhodes, and Troy.
(A) was involved in the day-to-day workings of the unusual judicial system and took a personal interest in the law, settling
(B) was unusually involved in the workings of the day-to-day judicial system, taking a personal interest in settling
(C) was involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system, took an unusually personal interest in the law, and settled
(D) was unusually involved in the workings of the day-to-day judicial system and took a personal interest in settling
(E) was unusually involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system, taking a personal interest in the law and settling
So here's how I thought about this question:

Step 1: I noticed the sentence structure was: "Compared to XYZ, Claudius was involved in the day-to-day- workings of blah blah blah" [ I did not read the rest of the sentence! ]

I realized with a comaprison, you have to say that Claudius was "more involved"--you can't just say "Claudius was involved."

But I quickly looked through the answer choices and noticed none of them key comparison words like "more"---A, B, C, D, and E---all had no mention of the word "more."

Step 2: So since there were no comparison words like "more"--I looked at what other possible options:
"was involved"
or "was unusually involved"

Aha! So only answer choices (B), (D), and (E) have "was unusually involved"--at least it gives us a sense of how it compares with the other guy.

Step 3: I read through answer choice (B)---but the phrase "day-to-day judicial system" doesn't seem to make sense. Usually people say "day-to-day operations of XYZ"--NOT "operations of day-to-day XYZ"

So because of this awkwardness, I temporarily eliminated (B) and looked at the remaining (D) and (E).

Step 4: (D) had the same issue as (B)--so then I just jumped to (E).
(E) rephrased it correctly as "day-to-day workings of the judicial system"---it also correctly used "unusually involved" so we can compare the two guys.
And lastly, the -ING verb "taking" is positioned correctly to describe "Claudius" as "taking a personal interest in the law."
(See GMATPill Framework #3 for students)

So there we have it---without fully reading each answer choice or even the original sentence, I confidently arrived at answer choice (E) in very little time.

Final answer: (E)
Last edited by gmatpill on Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by HSPA » Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:47 am
Hi guys,

this SC has started with "was".. shouldnt we maintain the tense all along. In option E the "-ing continous" is hurting some where in my tummy. I feel/fell for C.
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by gmatapril » Fri Feb 25, 2011 10:56 am
thank you so much guys OA is E
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by gmatapril » Fri Feb 25, 2011 11:20 am
why is "unusual judicial system "wrong?


tetura84 wrote:
gmatapril wrote:Compared to the Roman emperors who preceded him, Claudius was involved in the day-to-day workings of the unusual judicial system and took a personal interest in the law, settling disputes as far away as Alexandria, Rhodes, and Troy.
(A) was involved in the day-to-day workings of the unusual judicial system and took a personal interest in the law, settling
(B) was unusually involved in the workings of the day-to-day judicial system, taking a personal interest in settling
(C) was involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system, took an unusually personal interest in the law, and settled
(D) was unusually involved in the workings of the day-to-day judicial system and took a personal interest in settling
(E) was unusually involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system, taking a personal interest in the law and settling
IMO E

A. unusual judicial system = doesn't look good to me. Also, settling = ing-modifier preceded by comma, this modifier modifies the entire previous clause and, this is wrong
B. day-to-day judicial system
C. COMMA + AND = coordinating conjunction, each of the clauses should be independent. This option would work if there were no COMMA(IMO)
D. day-to-day system
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by gmatpill » Fri Feb 25, 2011 11:31 am
HSPA wrote:Hi guys,

this SC has started with "was".. shouldnt we maintain the tense all along. In option E the "-ing continous" is hurting some where in my tummy. I feel/fell for C.
No--this is not a tense question. Besides, all the answer choices are using "was"--so there's no point in wasting time to challenge it's not something else. Please see my explanation above as to what the important elements are.

As for your second concern---

Instead of:
" Claudius was unusually involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system, taking a personal interest in the law and settling disputes as far away as Alexandria, Rhodes, and Troy. "

Try flipping it around like this:

"Taking a personal interest [X] and settling disputes as far away as [Y], Claudius was unusually involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system."

See? It's a lot easier to see so now it should "look" more comfortable to you. You should be comfortable with the sentence structure in (E) as it is correct.
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by tetura84 » Fri Feb 25, 2011 7:41 pm
gmatapril wrote:why is "unusual judicial system "wrong?
It sounded awkward to me that, a judicial system is unusual.
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by tetura84 » Fri Feb 25, 2011 7:49 pm
HSPA wrote:Hi guys,

this SC has started with "was".. shouldnt we maintain the tense all along. In option E the "-ing continous" is hurting some where in my tummy. I feel/fell for C.
HSPA, I feel you should rather familiar with this type of structure because this is very common in GMAT.

COMMA + ing-modifier modifies the entire clause immediately before it.
But, only ing-modifier modifies the noun before it.
e.g. I saw the boy running across the road.
Here, running across the road modifies boy, and not I saw the boy.

So, in this case,

Compared to the Roman emperors who preceded him, Claudius was unusually involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system, taking a personal interest in the law and settling disputes as far away as Alexandria, Rhodes, and Troy.

How Claudius was unusually involved in the day-to-day workings of the judicial system?
By taking X
and settling Y (notice parallelism)
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