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Only seven people this century

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Only seven people this century

by sparsh.21 » Sat Jan 10, 2009 12:40 am
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


OA is E

please explain why other options are incorrect.
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Re: Only seven people this century

by iamcste » Sat Jan 10, 2009 1:49 am
sparsh.21 wrote:Only seven people this century have been k!IIed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies—less than those k!IIed 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


OA is E

please explain why other options are incorrect.
what is compared

People compared by X and people compared by y

People are countable so fewer..

B and E

B sets illogical comparison

fewer than have been killed

what are killed?

Choose E
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Re: Only seven people this century

by piyush_nitt » Sat Jan 10, 2009 2:17 am
iamcste wrote:
sparsh.21 wrote:Only seven people this century have been k!IIed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies—less than those k!IIed 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


OA is E

please explain why other options are incorrect.
what is compared

People compared by X and people compared by y

People are countable so fewer..

B and E

B sets illogical comparison

fewer than have been k!IIed

what are k!IIed?

Choose E
Why D is wrong?

I understand we cannot use less but why not number?
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Re: Only seven people this century

by iamcste » Sat Jan 10, 2009 2:46 am
piyush_nitt wrote:Why D is wrong?

I understand we cannot use less but why not number?

X lower than Y

Y-number

Y-people

IMO, illogical comparison

( There is no clue which I could find which can relate " A number " with people killed by white sharks)


X fewer than Y


only 7 people killed by shark fewer than the ones killed by bee strings

Right comparison
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by ddo » Mon Jan 19, 2009 1:08 pm
Hi,

OA posted by sparsh is not correct. I just got this in a test and OA is B.
I picked D, which is clearly incorrect, but I can not see what is the problem with E.

Any thoughts?
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by pandeyvineet24 » Tue Jan 20, 2009 12:19 pm
I Chose B.

Comaprison is between the Number of People (Not the people).
Only B compared the numbers. Since the number of People is a countable
nount it should use "Fewer"
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by casfguy » Tue Jan 20, 2009 2:18 pm
I think, both B and E are correct. E has a issue with ones
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E?

by satish.nagdev » Wed Jan 21, 2009 9:54 am
fewer, than the ones

"The Ones" is singular however here people killed by bee stings is more than 7(plural) Ones alone is plural

IMO
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by mfarhansohail » Wed Jan 21, 2009 11:09 pm
fewer than have been

'have been' is required to maitain parallelism in tense. fewer for number.
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by welcome » Thu Jan 22, 2009 9:39 am
Answer should be E.

A and B can not be answers because "-" (dash), should explain or describe the noun or phase appearing before it. so it is clearly wrong.

C - SHould be fewer with countable objects
D - Only seven people, can not be compared with number.
E - correct, though ONES is not usual but E is best amoung all other options.
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by aroon7 » Sat Jan 24, 2009 8:10 pm
E. movies, fewer than the ones
is wrong because fewer than ones seems to modify movies
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by aroon7 » Sat Jan 24, 2009 8:21 pm
use of dash:

*******************
The dash ( -- or — ) should be used when making a brief interruption within a statement, a sudden change of thought, an additional comment, or a dramatic qualification. It can also be used to add a parenthetical statement, such as for further clarification, but should still be relevant to the sentence. Otherwise, use parentheses. Keep in mind that the rest of the sentence should still flow naturally. Try to remove the statement within the dash from the sentence; if the sentence appears disjointed or does not make sense, then you may need to revise. There should be spaces before and after the dash in British English.

* An introductory clause is a brief phrase that comes—yes, you guessed it—at the beginning of a sentence.
* This is the end of our sentence—or so we thought.
********************
--------------------------
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by jeevan.Gk » Sat Jan 31, 2009 2:30 am
The above explanation may hold good if 2 dashes are provided..

But for a single dash - , it is used to explain the word/phrase immideately preceeding the dash.

In this case i feel B cant be the answer.
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by lunarpower » Thu Jun 11, 2009 3:52 am
jeevan.Gk wrote:The above explanation may hold good if 2 dashes are provided..

But for a single dash - , it is used to explain the word/phrase immideately preceeding the dash.
this distinction does not exist. there is only one kind of dash.

you'll occasionally see two hyphens in place of the dash IN TYPED MATERIAL. this only occurs because you can't normally TYPE a long dash. (some programs, such as microsoft word, will auto-correct to a long dash in appropriate situations, but you can't type one on a forum.)

the standard way to type a long dash on a regular keyboard is to type two hyphens. there is no such thing as "single dash vs. double dash".

--

yes, dashes can also be used to precede an explanation of the term that comes before the dash.
however, that's exactly the same dash that sets off the modifiers discussed earlier.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by lunarpower » Thu Jun 11, 2009 3:53 am
by the way:

in the context of choices (a) and (b), 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).
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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