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by agemroy » Sat Jul 12, 2008 4:48 am
On Earth, among the surest indications of sunspot cycles are believed to be the rate that trees grow, as seen in the rings visible in the cross sections of their trunks.

A. On Earth, among the surest indications of sunspot cycles are believed to be the rate that trees grow
B. On Earth, among the surest indications of sunspot cycles are, it is believed, the rate of tree growth
C. On Earth, the rate at which trees grow is believed to be among the surest indications of sunspot cycles
D. Among the surest indications on Earth of sunspot cycles, believed to be the tree growth rate
E. Among the surest indications on Earth of sunspot cycles is believed to be the rate at which trees grow

Plz explain
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by loki.gmat » Sat Jul 12, 2008 5:52 am
A - "the rate" is singular.hence usage of "are" is incorrect.
B - same as A.
C - gives an impression that the sunspot cycles are seen in the rings of tress.hence incorrect.
D - .........."tree" (singular) growth ............of their (plural) trunks.hence incorrect.

hence IMO E.


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by raunekk » Sat Jul 12, 2008 6:42 am
imo:C


OA??
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by gmattestprep » Sat Jul 12, 2008 7:35 am
What's the official answer?
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by agemroy » Sat Jul 12, 2008 9:15 am
OA is E.
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by reachac » Sat Jul 12, 2008 10:18 am
IMO E

Rate is singular so evthng boils dwn 2 C and E. C at first sight, seems better constuction than E. But I feel the scoring point for E is 'their' in the remaing part of the sentence, which must modify trees. So I chose the option which ends the underlined part in 'Trees' so as to keep the modifier pronoun relatively closer to its antecedent
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by raunekk » Sat Jul 12, 2008 10:32 am
hi loki.gmat

can you please explain me the meaning of the sentence..i am a bit confuse

thanks a lot.
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by loki.gmat » Sat Jul 12, 2008 11:03 am
@raunekk
here the author wants to indicate that "the rate at which trees grow" is one of the many "surest indications on earth of sunspot cycles".



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by navami » Sat Jun 04, 2011 8:40 am
I am clueless with the options.
This time no looking back!!!
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by arpita@gurome » Sat Jun 04, 2011 10:09 am
The original sentence has a modifier error and a subject-verb agreement error. More importantly, it has a very awkward idiomatic structure. For instance, the sentence says, "On Earth, X is an indication of Y". This makes it seem as if we are comparing two planets, let us say Earth and Mars. On Earth X is an indication of Y and on Mars, A is an indication of B. In fact, all that the author wants to say is that the rate of tree growth is one of the indications on earth of sunspot cycles.

(A), (B), and (C) repeat this idiomatically awkward construction. Choice (D) is an incomplete sentence. Choice (E) is correct both because it has the right idiomatic construct: "among the surest indications on Earth of sunspot cycles is X", and because it fixes the subject-verb agreement error, "among the surest indications...is...the rate...". ["the rate" is singular and takes "is" as the verb and not "are", as was the case in the original sentence.]

Hope that helps. :)
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by Stuart@KaplanGMAT » Sat Jun 04, 2011 1:38 pm
agemroy wrote:On Earth, among the surest indications of sunspot cycles are believed to be the rate that trees grow, as seen in the rings visible in the cross sections of their trunks.

A. On Earth, among the surest indications of sunspot cycles are believed to be the rate that trees grow
B. On Earth, among the surest indications of sunspot cycles are, it is believed, the rate of tree growth
C. On Earth, the rate at which trees grow is believed to be among the surest indications of sunspot cycles
D. Among the surest indications on Earth of sunspot cycles, believed to be the tree growth rate
E. Among the surest indications on Earth of sunspot cycles is believed to be the rate at which trees grow

Plz explain
As Arpita explains, E is the best of the lot, but even E leaves a lot to be desired (E makes it sound like sunspot cycles occur on Earth, which is non-sensical - the Earth doesn't have sunspots!). What's the source of the question?
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by arpita@gurome » Sat Jun 04, 2011 8:46 pm
I agree with the above post. Definitely not an OG question. :)
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by navami » Sun Jun 05, 2011 3:18 am
Thanks Stuart and Arpita for the explaination.
This time no looking back!!!
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