Sentence Correction

The data being collected in the current geological survey are providing a strong warning for engineers as they consider the new dam project, but their greatest importance might lie in how they influence the upcoming decision by those same engineers on whether to retrofit 75 bridges in the survey zone.

The data being collected in the current geological survey are providing a strong warning for engineers as they consider the new dam project, but their greatest importance

The data being collected in the current geological survey provide a strong warning for engineers as they consider the new dam project, but its greatest importance

The data collected in the current geological survey is providing a strong warning for engineers as they consider the new dam project, but their greatest importance

The data collected in the current geological survey provides a strong warning for engineers in consideration of the new dam project, but its greatest importance

The data collected in the current geological survey provide a strong warning for engineers in consideration for the new dam project, but the greatest importance

"A" and "B" can be eliminated because of the usage of "being".
"Data" is plural. So on that basis we can eliminate "C" and "D" as the verbs "is providing" and "provides" do not agree with the plural noun "Data" in the respective options.
Hence we are left with "E" by POE.
Please correct me if I am wrong.

Careful! "Being" ain't "ain't" - being is a legitimate word with legitimate usages...it highly correlated with incorrect answers on the GMAT but it's not always wrong (which is part of the lesson in this particular question).

I'll tell you why E is wrong - "in consideration for the new dam project" is some pretty awful diction, but more concretely look at "they" just outside the underlined portion. With the phrasing of E, it's unclear whether "they" refers to "data" or "engineers".

Don't want to give away too much too soon since this is a great problem to have to think your way through, but E is incorrect and I'll be back later on with more hints and takeaways from this one.

Careful! "Being" ain't "ain't" - being is a legitimate word with legitimate usages...it highly correlated with incorrect answers on the GMAT but it's not always wrong (which is part of the lesson in this particular question).

I'll tell you why E is wrong - "in consideration for the new dam project" is some pretty awful diction, but more concretely look at "they" just outside the underlined portion. With the phrasing of E, it's unclear whether "they" refers to "data" or "engineers".

Don't want to give away too much too soon since this is a great problem to have to think your way through, but E is incorrect and I'll be back later on with more hints and takeaways from this one.

Thanks Brian for sharing your insights. It has almost become a habit of ruling out options with "being" in them.

Although I myself was not quite convinced with "E", I thought options with a "being" in them would be wrong. Can you please explain in detail when the usage of "being" is correct?

Thanks in advance.[/quote]

I was stuck with A or E. But since A has clear antecedent of "...they influence the upcoming...", IMO A is the answer.[/u]

Don't get me wrong - if you eliminate "being" every time you'll be right on well over 90% of SC questions when you do so. But I know there are questions out there where it's used correctly, and they're bound to be among the more difficult since most students know the "being is wrong!" principle. So having that extra moment of caution when, like in this case, you don't like the other answer choices...that's a nice competitive advantage.

"Being" is properly used to express a temporary state. It's often used hideously on the GMAT as a modifier for something that isn't at all temporary:

Being the first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong...

"Being" is wrong there - he wasn't "being" the first man on the moon...that's just who he is.

But you could correctly say:

While being driven to the shuttle launch, Neil Armstrong remarked to his chauffeur that...

Because "being driven" is a temporary state.

So in this question, which clearly denotes the "current geological survey", "being collected" is a temporary state. The data won't always be collected, but currently for a temporary period of time the data are being collected, so "being" is used properly here.

_______________________________________

Strategically for your GMAT, if you're down between a couple of answers and one of them uses "being" that's not a bad reason to eliminate it. But I wouldn't make "being" your primary decision point - it's much better as a "you've eliminated a couple answers because of (S/V agreement, modifier, whatever) and now you don't see a major difference other than 'being'" elimination point. Almost precisely because it's become just such common 'wisdom' that being should be eliminated, GMAT SC writers have a right (if not responsibility) to throw out some hard questions in which "being" is the trap. And as you see here, it's the third word of the first two answer choices, so it's in perfect trap mode on this question.

I have couple of questions -

1. Is the antecedent of "their" is "Data" or "Engineers"?
2. Shouldn't "Data" when used as collective noun considered singular?

Kindly help.

Hey Mission,

Your questions are crucial to this problem - at its heart it's a pronoun question. Data can be singular or plural, but the outside-the-underline "they" is a big clue - as is the fact that the sentence uses "...they influence the upcoming decision by those same engineers", meaning that "they" can only refer to data, not engineers. The sentence indicates that it's treating "data" as plural, so B and D are incorrect.

B also uses the plural verb "provide", so its is wrong for both reasons there.

C commits a pronoun error in that the pronoun "their" is right, but the verb "is providing" is singular and therefore doesn't agree with how the sentence is treating data.

And E is wrong as I mentioned above.

So A is correct, and what can you learn from this question?

*Being isn't ALWAYS wrong. It has a legitimate usage.
*When you're dealing with singular/plural designations, look outside the underlined portion for clues. Difficult questions tend to masterfully hide the singular/plural controller somewhere far enough away from the underline - often at the end of the sentence - that people just never get that far to see it.
*When you're dealing with a noun that could be singular or plural (data, fish, deer), look for fixed pronouns or verbs outside the underline that indicate how the sentence is treating that noun.

Good day Brian
i agree that like all collective nouns ,data can be singular or plural .but there is rule that these collective nouns follow in being singular or plural .for example jury,a collective noun, is singular when its action are collectively directed in one direction but when the jury is divided and its action are not taken as one unit then it is taken as plural
my question is why aren't we following the same rule for data in this question
in fact the fact that data is going to influence the upcoming decision is something that data will do in unison !!
i feel that the non underlined part sud have treated data singular considering the rule that i have mentioned
Brian plz provide inputs .i am not intending to question OA

aditya8062 wrote:data can be singular or plural.

Technically, data is the PLURAL form of datum.
Examples of data in the OG12:

SC36, p. 40:
New DATA from United States Forest Service ecologists SHOW that for every dollar spent on controlled small- scale burning, forest thinning, and the training of fire-management personnel, seven dollars are saved that would have been spent on extinguishing big fires.

p. 115:
The degree to which numerical DATA ARE SPREAD OUT or dispersed can be measured in many ways.

PS81, p. 163:
DATA for a certain biology experiment ARE given in the table above.

p. 360:
They ruled out local bias because breakage DATA obtained from other Pleistocene sites WERE similar to the La Brea data.

p. 366:
These DATA HAVE ESTABLISHED a strong connection between variations in the Earth's orbit and the periodicity of the ice ages.

p. 501:
Presenting DATA that EXTEND further into the past than the journalist's data.

In every case, data is given a PLURAL verb.

wow !! thanks mitch but plz confirm is data a collective noun ? after reading ur post i am doubting if data is a collective noun

aditya8062 wrote:wow !! thanks mitch but plz confirm is data a collective noun ? after reading ur post i am doubting if data is a collective noun

Outside the GMAT, data is often treated as a synonym for information.
In such cases, data will take a singular verb.
In fact, data + singular verb has become so common in conversational speech that most people now find data + plural verb a bit odd-sounding.
However -- as the examples in my post above show -- GMAC seems to favor treating data as a plural noun.

Wow !

Thanks experts for enlightening us ....that was some great advice....

this place is way way better than where most people waste their time.....fb !...& we all have a mission...

A Sincere thanks to all of U !! I learnt so much )

Regards,
~Himu.

in option A they refers to data as well as engineers.is not that incorrect.the problem of pronoun ambiguity