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by hemanth28 » Sun Jun 21, 2009 12:56 am
skr172 wrote:(D) sounds as if France gets 33% of energy from Germany's nuclear power :? Wierd right.. thats y it is wrong. :D
nice one line explanation... thanks a lot.
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by iamcste » Sat Mar 13, 2010 9:10 am
hi experts,

1. I want to know the exact reasons why options A, B, D and E are incorrect? I especially want to know how D, E change the meaning by shifting "in germany" and also want to confirm if C has shift of meaning from "produced" to "uses"

2. I wanted to know what are common things tested between this question and other one discussed in

https://www.beatthegmat.com/soaring-tele ... 21393.html

( In this question is "of" missing...for e.g. should it be "soaring costs accounted for more than half OF the spending in XYZ)

thanks, Iamcste

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by lunarpower » Mon Mar 15, 2010 2:14 am
A) while in Germany it is just over 33%
the pronoun "it" doesn't have a legitimate antecedent.

here, "it" would have to stand for something like "the percentage/proportion/fraction of energy provided by nukes". there is no such noun in the sentence, so "it" is an orphan.
B) compared to Germany, which uses just over 33%
EVERYTHING here is wrong.

"compared to germany" isn't a valid comparison, because it's not parallel to anything.
france is tethered to the prepositional phrase "IN france", so it can't be compared to just "germany".

also, the sentence doesn't say that france "uses" anything.

finally, "uses" isn't used logically here. germany "uses" the nuclear energy, but it also "uses" the energy that isn't nuclear!
C) whereas nuclear poweraccounts for just over 33% of the energy produced in Germany
this sentence is correct.

it doesn't use any particularly difficult or obscure constructions, so i think i can let it stand without explanation.
if there's anything you don't understand about it, post back.
D) whereas just over 33% of the energy comes from nuclear power in Germany
this sentence is written in a way whose meaning is at best ambiguous and at worst incorrect.

one possible meaning, if not the meaning, is that 33% of "the energy" (we don't know where this energy is, or where it's used) comes from "nuclear power in germany". i.e., the power itself is in germany (whatever that means), but "the energy" is we-don't-know-where.
E) compared with the energy from nuclear power in Germany, where it is just over 33%
first, false comparison: the earlier part doesn't mention "the energy from nuclear power in france", so this isn't parallel. (the earlier part mentions a percentage of ALL power in france.)

second, and more obviously, the pronoun "it" doesn't have a legitimate antecedent, for essentially the same reason as in (a).
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by tnaim » Fri Apr 16, 2010 10:18 am
lunarpower wrote:
C) whereas nuclear poweraccounts for just over 33% of the energy produced in Germany
this sentence is correct.

it doesn't use any particularly difficult or obscure constructions, so i think i can let it stand without explanation.
if there's anything you don't understand about it, post back.
Hi Ron
While I do understand why a,b,d, and e are wrong, I had a question about C. Doesn't the structure of this sentence violates the rule of parallelism: "over 75% of the energy....whereas nuclear power..."
Thank you!
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by lunarpower » Fri Apr 16, 2010 7:06 pm
tnaim wrote:
lunarpower wrote:
C) whereas nuclear poweraccounts for just over 33% of the energy produced in Germany
this sentence is correct.

it doesn't use any particularly difficult or obscure constructions, so i think i can let it stand without explanation.
if there's anything you don't understand about it, post back.
Hi Ron
While I do understand why a,b,d, and e are wrong, I had a question about C. Doesn't the structure of this sentence violates the rule of parallelism: "over 75% of the energy....whereas nuclear power..."
Thank you!
"
no -- "whereas", like other subordinating conjunctions, connects two clauses that by themselves would be independent sentences. since the two items connected are so individually large, it would be an unreasonable burden to expect them to be written in completely parallel structures.

so, in general, the takeaway you can get here is this:
when a subordinating conjunction connects two complete clauses, those clauses don't have to be written in parallel form -- the only requirement is that each of them be a complete sentence on its own.

--

by the way, this is an official problem. (i'm not sure whether it's marked as such on the thread, but i've seen it on the gmatprep software.)
remember that you can't question the structure of correct answers in official problems -- if something appears in an officially correct answer, then it's correct, and you must learn it as such.
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by tnaim » Fri Apr 16, 2010 7:33 pm
THANK YOU Ron. I now understand why the sentence can still be correct without maintaining parallelism.
I actually found this problem on the GMAT OG book, but could not understand why they chose this answer. I knew I must be making a wrong assumption or missing something out, and Your explanation helped me figure it out. :)

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by lunarpower » Fri Apr 16, 2010 7:43 pm
tnaim wrote:THANK YOU Ron. I now understand why the sentence can still be correct without maintaining parallelism.
I actually found this problem on the GMAT OG book, but could not understand why they chose this answer. I knew I must be making a wrong assumption or missing something out, and Your explanation helped me figure it out. :)
ok.

since you are thus aware of the fact that this is an official problem, make sure that you heed the warning above when you study such problems: NEVER question the correct answers to the official problems.

in other words, the WRONG question to ask is this:
"isn't that wrong?"

the CORRECT question to ask is this:
"why/how is that correct?"

at first, the difference between these two questions might seem subtle or small, but the different attitudes espoused by each are radically disparate.
the first question suggests an inevitably fruitless search for mistakes in sentences that GMAC has specifically indicated as correct, while the second evinces an understanding that whatever is officially correct must be regarded as correct (even though the officially correct answers are sometimes ugly enough to make me want to throw the book against the wall).
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by lunarpower » Fri Apr 16, 2010 7:45 pm
also, in case it's not clear from the above post, this sort of absolute faith in the correctness of correct answers should be limited to OFFICIAL problems.

if you're looking at a problem from a third-party source, feel free to approach with a critical viewpoint even those answers indicated as correct; the only sources to be regarded as absolute gospel are those published by GMAC itself.
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by tnaim » Fri Apr 16, 2010 8:03 pm
lunarpower wrote:
tnaim wrote:THANK YOU Ron. I now understand why the sentence can still be correct without maintaining parallelism.
I actually found this problem on the GMAT OG book, but could not understand why they chose this answer. I knew I must be making a wrong assumption or missing something out, and Your explanation helped me figure it out. :)
ok.

since you are thus aware of the fact that this is an official problem, make sure that you heed the warning above when you study such problems: NEVER question the correct answers to the official problems.

in other words, the WRONG question to ask is this:
"isn't that wrong?"

the CORRECT question to ask is this:
"why/how is that correct?"

at first, the difference between these two questions might seem subtle or small, but the different attitudes espoused by each are radically disparate.
the first question suggests an inevitably fruitless search for mistakes in sentences that GMAC has specifically indicated as correct, while the second evinces an understanding that whatever is officially correct must be regarded as correct (even though the officially correct answers are sometimes ugly enough to make me want to throw the book against the wall).
Thank you for the advice!excellent point!!!
the last line made me laugh!!since it describes exactly how I feel sometimes after I read the answer choices or discover what the right answer is.

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by varundaga05 » Wed May 26, 2010 3:20 am
Hi,

as per OG 12

option D

The use of the definite article the makes it
seem as though the energy being referred to
in this part of the sentence is that of France.

Can someone please explain this point a bit further.

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by lunarpower » Fri May 28, 2010 3:11 am
varundaga05 wrote:Hi,

as per OG 12

option D

The use of the definite article the makes it
seem as though the energy being referred to
in this part of the sentence is that of France.

Can someone please explain this point a bit further.
heh, ok, i can see why you had some trouble with this one. remember that the og people are not necessarily in the business of writing spectacularly good answers to their own problems (in fact, the quality of the explanations in the og is consistently and noticeably inferior to that of the questions themselves).

let me explain by way of analogy.

consider the following sentence:

over 80% of the energy in almonds comes from fat; by contrast, less than 10% of the energy comes from protein.
--> in this sentence, it should be pretty clear that "the energy"refers to "the energy in almonds".
so far so good.

now, for where the trouble comes in:
over 80% of the energy in almonds comes from fat; less than 10% of the energy comes from protein in beef.
this sentence is ambiguous in the same way as the one you posted, but, because you've been "primed" for the meaning of the preceding sentence, it should be easier for you to see the ambiguity.
i.e., one interpretation of this sentence -- the interpretation in which "the energy" has the same significance as in the preceding sentence -- suggests that some percentage of the energy in almonds actually comes from beef!

the problem that you posted has the same issue.
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by ansumania » Tue Jun 01, 2010 7:36 am
lunarpower wrote:
tnaim wrote:
lunarpower wrote:
C) whereas nuclear poweraccounts for just over 33% of the energy produced in Germany
this sentence is correct.

it doesn't use any particularly difficult or obscure constructions, so i think i can let it stand without explanation.
if there's anything you don't understand about it, post back.
Hi Ron
While I do understand why a,b,d, and e are wrong, I had a question about C. Doesn't the structure of this sentence violates the rule of parallelism: "over 75% of the energy....whereas nuclear power..."
Thank you!
"
no -- "whereas", like other subordinating conjunctions, connects two clauses that by themselves would be independent sentences. since the two items connected are so individually large, it would be an unreasonable burden to expect them to be written in completely parallel structures.

so, in general, the takeaway you can get here is this:
when a subordinating conjunction connects two complete clauses, those clauses don't have to be written in parallel form -- the only requirement is that each of them be a complete sentence on its own.

--

by the way, this is an official problem. (i'm not sure whether it's marked as such on the thread, but i've seen it on the gmatprep software.)
remember that you can't question the structure of correct answers in official problems -- if something appears in an officially correct answer, then it's correct, and you must learn it as such.
hi Ron,

as you mentioned 'when a subordinating conjunction connects two complete clauses, those clauses don't have to be written in parallel form ', option C should not have been regarded as a wrong option. Pl. suggest. It's a question posted in the forum and is an official problem.

below is the link.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/meteorites-s ... 58623.html

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by lunarpower » Wed Jun 02, 2010 4:19 am
ansumania wrote:
as you mentioned 'when a subordinating conjunction connects two complete clauses, those clauses don't have to be written in parallel form ', option C should not have been regarded as a wrong option. Pl. suggest. It's a question posted in the forum and is an official problem.

below is the link.

https://www.beatthegmat.com/meteorites-s ... 58623.html
hi --

i did say that, but please don't read more into that statement than what is actually written there.

in particular, the statement just says that perfect parallelism is not NECESSARY in the case of long constructions such as complete clauses. in other words, you can't knock an answer choice out on the basis of trivial differences in structure between two entire clauses that are placed in parallel.

however, you are not using what is perhaps the most important principle of evaluating parallelism:
parallelism is a beauty contest:
you should always pick choices that are more parallel over choices that are less parallel.


in the problems cited, the correct answer exhibits essentially perfect parallelism, so you may feel free to eliminate the choices whose parallelism is clearly inferior (such as c).

there's also the issue of redundancy / lack of clarity, caused by the juxtaposition of "one" and "once" in the same construction.
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by ansumania » Wed Jun 02, 2010 5:50 am
I understand now.....

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by ManKuts123 » Sat Feb 26, 2011 9:48 am
Answer is D