Another difficult SC

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Another difficult SC

by Stockmoose16 » Thu Sep 04, 2008 12:27 pm
With its plan to develop seven and a half acres of shore land, Celeveland is but one of a large number of communities on the Great Lakes that is looking to its waterfront as a way to improve the quality of urban life and attract new businesses.

b) is looking at its waterfront to improve the quality of urban life and attract
c) are looking to their waterfronts to improve the quality of urban life and attract
d) are looking to its waterfront as a way of improving the quality of urban life and attracting
e) are looking at their waterfronts as a way they can improve the quality of urban life and attract

Why is 'are' the correct usage here? The MGMAT book says to ignore everything after the 'of' clause when trying to determine plural or singular tense. In this case, it says, "one of," which should be singular. Can a GMAT expert explain why the Manhattan book is wrong?
Source: — Sentence Correction |

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by bourne159 » Thu Sep 04, 2008 2:51 pm
This question has to do with the usage of 'a number of' and 'the number of'

'a number of' is always considered plural.
'the number of' is always considered singular.

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