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Similar to rising interest rates

by aspirant2011 » Mon May 09, 2011 4:55 am
Similar to rising interest rates, consumer and producer prices have been rising.

(A) Similar to rising interest rates, consumer and producer prices have been rising.
(B) Consumer and producer prices have been rising, as have interest rates.
(C) As interest rates are rising, so have consumer and producer prices.
(D) Consumer and producer prices have been rising, like interest rates do.
(E) Consumer and producer prices, as interest rates, have been rising.

[spoiler]OA: Don't you guys feel that in option B "as have interest rates" is wrong because it sounds as if the interest rates have already rose but first part is in continous tense so no parallelism is there........please correct me if I am wrong[/spoiler]
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by vineeshp » Mon May 09, 2011 4:59 am
B looks the best answer.

as have interest rates means to say "as have interest rates been rising".

If not B, what would you pick?
Vineesh,
Just telling you what I know and think. I am not the expert. :)
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by aspirant2011 » Mon May 09, 2011 5:15 am
I rejected B because was in confusion of the doubt which I asked....... Wats wrong with option A apart from non parallelism?????
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by clock60 » Mon May 09, 2011 5:35 am
i also vote for B,
i think similar to is wrong in A, as similar to is an adjective, and it better works with nouns or pronouns, but not with gerunds- here rising
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by cyrwr1 » Mon May 09, 2011 8:28 am
what makes B>A? please advise.

Thanks
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by Brian@VeritasPrep » Mon May 09, 2011 2:11 pm
Great discussion - and for that distinction between A and B I'd refer to the logic as one systematic way to tell the difference. "Similar to..." plays the role of a modifier, and in doing so modifies "consumer and producer prices".

Well...are interest rates similar to consumer prices? Or is the fact that they are rising similar?

The latter meaning is much more logical...that's the intent of the sentence, and choice B nails it by showing that both prices and rates have been rising.

The meaning in A is suspect...it's not that logical that prices are similar to interest rates. The one way that it's logical that they're similar is in the fact that both are going up, but this modifier doesn't structure that all that clearly.

One more addendum - if you do take the modifier as being logical (I'd argue it's not), then you have "similar to rising interest rates, x is rising". Which is either (or maybe both) redundant and unparallel - if we're already calling the interest rates "rising" with that adjective, then it's a little bit redundant to add "rising" in the second half of the sentence. But on the flip side we can't really add "similar to rising interest rates, rising prices..." because then what do you say about them for a verb? They're rising...that's the point of the sentence.

Especially when you compare it to B, A has enough problems that it's an inferior choice...
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by atulmangal » Mon May 09, 2011 8:00 pm
Hi Brian,

Though m really poor in comparison questions, i drop Op A because a similarity is set b/w

Rising (change) interest rates and prices (static)

The word Rising seems to me a suspect. As per my understanding this adjective is creating a lot of problem. You said its illogical to say rate similar to price...here i have doubt...

I agree, Rate is something like 3% or 5% etc while price is for ex: $400

But still i believe they both can be related as both are static quantities, if u simply say Rate and Price, both of them have the same state i,e STATIC or CONSTANT until unless when you use this adjective Rising, then the state change...so we can't say change is similar to something STATIC.

One more Ex: suppose you change RATE and place Price.

Similar to rising prices of mangoes, the prices of apples

I think the above comparison is wrong, though here we have the word PRICE on both sides, its wrong as i stated earlier, left side represent change and right side is constant.

I agree to each and every point you mentioned in your post, just putting my thoughts (though makes me feel that m a phys co who is over-thinking ) to know are these points valid????

if we modify Op A and chop off rising,

Similar to interest rates, consumer and producer prices

Is this comparison valid??? Or still invalid as you already suggested Rate compared with prices is wrong????
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by GMATMadeEasy » Tue May 10, 2011 12:38 am
@Brian@VeritasPrep : that's wonderful explanation especially part of addendum.

Question: Don't you think B is also ambiguous ? why ? It is missing "been" after "have" , i feel. ellipsis has to follow some logic at least no ?
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by aspirant2011 » Tue May 10, 2011 9:44 am
yup I have the same doubt as GMATMADEEasy as I rejected B because I felt second part of the sentence to be incomplete i.e "as have interest rates"
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by Brian@VeritasPrep » Tue May 10, 2011 11:50 am
Great discussion - thanks for keeping this one alive!

@aspirant and @GMATMadeEasy - B is definitely a correct expression. I think it looks a little awkward because the subject (interest rates) comes after the verb (have) but that subject-verb flip is okay. And "been" would actually make for an ugly sentence if we added that to "have". That verb phrase "have been rising" shortens to "have" when it's part of a parallel construction. For example, you'd say:

"Oh, you've been out of the office? Don't worry; so have I."

And, again, there are so many subtle rules of English that it's going to be difficult to master all of them, so I go back to that point of eliminating those about which you're absolutely certain. Because the second clause of B has a subject and a verb, it's not a "must eliminate - sentence fragment" candidate, so I'd leave it until you're out of reasons to eliminate 4 other choices.



@Atul: We may be straying from definitely-testable GMAT concepts here with the proposed choices, but I still think that "similar to prices, rates..." and even "similar to prices...prices" is wrong because we need a reason for the similarity. And the reason here is that they're both rising...so what's similar is the verb (rising) not the nouns (rate to price or price to price), and so the adjective "similar" is illogical...we'd need "similarly", an adverb, to say something like:

"Interest rates have been rising ever since 2008; similarly, consumer prices have been increasing steadily for most of that period."


Again, this is probably straying from GMAT-imperative knowledge, but in any kind of good writing there needs to be a reason for one thing to be similar to another, and they can't really be identical. So if we're saying "Similar to oil prices, wheat prices are set by speculators and not by producers" - that's okay...oil prices and wheat prices are similar in this one quality that both have. And because it's a quality and not a limited-time verb that makes them similar, I think you can get away with the adjective. But for all of these sentences we're talking about, the similarity in question is a specific-tense verb "have been rising", so the similarity is related directly to the verb and would need to take on an adverb form.

Hopefully this doesn't go too far astray...I definitely wanted to answer the question though. And back to my recurring overall point - focus on those things that you see over and over again (modifiers, subject-verb agreement, etc.) and you probably won't have to deal too much with all this stuff!
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by Alchemist14 » Sat Oct 08, 2016 7:29 am
aspirant2011 wrote:Similar to rising interest rates, consumer and producer prices have been rising.

(A) Similar to rising interest rates, consumer and producer prices have been rising.
(B) Consumer and producer prices have been rising, as have interest rates.
(C) As interest rates are rising, so have consumer and producer prices.
(D) Consumer and producer prices have been rising, like interest rates do.
(E) Consumer and producer prices, as interest rates, have been rising.
Experts please help me on this one.

I narrowed it down to B and C.

I chose B because we are comparing clause to clause. But why is C wrong?- Is it because
we need to use the idiomatic expression JUST AS X, SO Y or is it wrong because of another reason?

Thanks in advance,
Al
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