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Read the question in the post below and MARK the correct answer.

A
12
21%
B
4
7%
C
2
4%
D
0
No votes
E
38
68%
 
Total votes: 56

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A Fresh 700 Level SC Question

by e-GMAT » Tue Jan 15, 2013 4:58 am
Try this difficult question fresh from the e-GMAT bakery!
After you have arrived at the correct answer, be sure to MARK the answer in the poll above.

Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost $1.07 billion in revenue, owing to the warming trend that forces half the nation's ski areas to open late and almost half to close early.
A. Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost
B. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and employing 187,000 people directly or indirectly between 2000 and 2010, lost
C. Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, which has centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, losing
D. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry between 2000 and 2010, with centers in 38 states and employing 187,000 people directly or indirectly, losing
E. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, which has centers in 38 states and employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost, between 2000 and 2010,

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OA E
Last edited by e-GMAT on Wed Jan 16, 2013 10:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by challenger63 » Tue Jan 15, 2013 8:11 am
I am not so good but I want to try explain.

Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost $1.07 billion in revenue, owing to the warming trend that forces half the nation's ski areas to open late and almost half to close early.
A. Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost

==> "With" introduces "prepositional phrase" while "which" introduces "relative clause" (S+V). In my opinion, it is not good to make parallel "prepositional phrase" and "relative clause".

However, the goal of parallelism is to make meaning clear. If we have construction such as "industry, which bla blab and [which] bla bla", it will be the best answer because parallelism explains us modification of industry, and both "which" are relative clauses. The second "which" in brackets can be omitted.

"With" is versatile modifier so it can modifier either the nearest noun or the whole clause while "which" in GMAT tends to modify the nearest noun.

Here, before comma is noun (industry) not a clause so both "with" and "which" works an appositive modifiers, modifying nearest noun. "And which" can't refer to "states" because we either need a comma before "and" or eliminate "and".

Summarizing, we can conclude that "and which" can only refer to "industry" and thus final sentence can be considered at least clear in terms of meaning. However, grammatically, parallelism issue still exists in A.

B. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and employing 187,000 people directly or indirectly between 2000 and 2010, lost

==> "between 2000 and 2010" is placed incorrectly. "with ....and employing" has the same issue as the first one.

C. Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, which has centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, losing

==> NO S+V, must be "lost" not "losing"

D. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry between 2000 and 2010, with centers in 38 states and employing 187,000 people directly or indirectly, losing

==> NO S+V, the same as C

E. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, which has centers in 38 states and employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost, between 2000 and 2010,

==> has and employs are parallel. "Between 2000 and 2010" is placed not so good but it's grammatically possible. Nevertheless, the final diction of the sentence is rather awful.

So, Finally I have split between A and E.

I voted for E because in terms of absolute grammar rules, this answer seems to be correct.
The author of the task wants us to focus on absolute grammar rules not proper diction.
Last edited by challenger63 on Thu Jan 17, 2013 4:19 pm, edited 9 times in total.
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by tisrar02 » Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:48 pm
I think its A only because the next contender E, in my opinion, misplaces 'between 2000 and 2010'.
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by wecaz » Tue Jan 15, 2013 11:35 pm
The industry lost, between 2000 and 2010, $1.07 billion in revenue.

Simplified form of E seems correct to me.
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by sana.noor » Wed Jan 16, 2013 8:20 am
it should be E
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by whats_in_the_store » Wed Jan 16, 2013 8:36 am
+1 for E
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by e-GMAT » Wed Jan 16, 2013 10:52 am
Official Explanation

Sentence structure of Original Sentence
"¢ Clause 1 - Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and
"¢ Clause 2 - which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly,
"¢ Clause 1 (contd.) - lost $1.07 billion in revenue, owing to the warming trend that forces half the nation's ski areas to open late and almost half to close early.

Meaning of Original Sentence
"¢ The sentence is about the ski and snowboarding industry.
"¢ Certain characteristics of industry presented - # of centers and # people employed.
"¢ This industry lost specific amount of money in revenue between 2000 and 2010.
"¢ The reason for the loss in revenue has been specified as - warming trend that forces the ski areas to open late or close early.

Errors in the Original Sentence
"¢ Clause 1 - Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and
"¢ Clause 2 - which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly,
"¢ Clause 1 (contd.) - lost $1.07 billion in revenue, owing to the warming trend that forces half the nation's ski areas to open late and almost half to close early.

1: Parallelism error - "with" prepositional phrase modifier is not parallel to "which" relative clause modifier. Both should be either relative clause modifier or prepositional phrase modifier.

Answer Choice Analysis
A. Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost
Parallelism Error as discussed above.

B. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and employing 187,000 people directly or indirectly between 2000 and 2010, lost
Modifier Error - Highlighted modifier does not modify the action "lost". It now implies that 187000 people were employed between the given time period. This results in change in meaning of the sentence.
Note that the parallelism error in choice A has been corrected. Both are phrase modifiers now. One is prepositional phrase modifier and the other is verb-ing modifier.

C. Between 2000 and 2010, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, which has centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, losing
SV Error - The main clause does not contain any verb. The subject "ski and snowboarding industry" does not have a verb. The verb "lost" in original sentence has been changed to non-verb form "losing".

D. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry between 2000 and 2010, with centers in 38 states and employing 187,000 people directly or indirectly, losing
SV Error - As in choice C.
Modifier Error - The highlighted modifier instead of modifying the verb - lost - modifies the industry. It somehow implies that the sentence is about ski and snowboarding industry that existed between 2000 and 2010. This does not make sense. As such logically there is only one ski and snowboarding industry and not about the industry that was between a certain time period.

E. The $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, which has centers in 38 states and employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost, between 2000 and 2010,
Correct Choice

Take Away
1: Clause entity cannot be parallel to a phrase entity. There can be more than one ways to correct such a list. Write both in either phrase form or clause form.
2: Modifiers should be placed appropriately to modify the intended entity.

Regards,
Payal
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by dentobizz » Wed Jan 16, 2013 11:18 am
doesn't the placement of modifier "Between 2000 and 2010" after "lost" make the intended meaning unclear ?

I wasn't able to pick a reply for this questions since
Options A,B,C,D have grammatical errors as explained in the last post and E has ambiguous meaning.
Please help.
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by BTG14 » Thu Jan 17, 2013 4:53 am
I knew A is wrong but when i compared with E. I found E is awkward.

@e-gmat:

Please explain me why E is right. I mean to say "between 2000 and 2010" after "lost" doesn't make sense to me.

Thanks in advance.
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by e-GMAT » Thu Jan 17, 2013 5:35 am
dentobizz wrote:doesn't the placement of modifier "Between 2000 and 2010" after "lost" make the intended meaning unclear ?

I wasn't able to pick a reply for this questions since
Options A,B,C,D have grammatical errors as explained in the last post and E has ambiguous meaning.
Please help.
Ok let's clarify this issue. The thing that threw you off was the placement of modifier "between 2000 and 2010" between a set of commas. Let's just look at the construction of main parts of choice E.

The ski and snowboarding industry lost, between 2000 and 2010, $1.07 billion in revenue.

Basically we have two pieces of information for the verb "lost" - the when and the what?
A: When has been answered by the modifier - between 2000 and 2010
B: What has been answered by the phrase - $1.07 billion in revenue

And in order to express these two bits of information, comma pair has been used to separate one information from another.

Now could we have written this in some other manner? Sure we could have. Here are the two ways in which we could have positioned this information:

1: The ski and snowboarding industry lost between 2000 and 2010 $1.07 billion in revenue. - Although there is nothing wrong with this construction, as a writer I feel more comfortable separating out the "between 2000 and 2010" within a comma pair. Such separation aids in better readability of the sentence.

2: Between 2000 and 2010, the ski and snowboarding industry lost $1.07 billion in revenue. - This is similar to choice A. And we could have created an answer choice in which we corrected the parallelism error of choice A. But then you would not have learned such aspect about comma pairs!! :) And then the question would not have been truly 700+ level question.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Payal
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by e-GMAT » Thu Jan 17, 2013 5:37 am
dentobizz wrote:doesn't the placement of modifier "Between 2000 and 2010" after "lost" make the intended meaning unclear ?
Please help.
In fact I would like to understand why you felt that the meaning is unclear. What else could "between 2000 and 2010" modify? I look forward to your response.
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by dentobizz » Thu Jan 17, 2013 6:35 am
Hi Payal, Thanks for your response.

I have few doubts:--
1] I feel that Placement of 'between 2000 to 2010' after 'lost' makes the meaning ambiguous. Because the implication can be XXXXindustry ,lost, b/w 2000-2010 dollars?? people?? no quantifier is mentioned thus the meaning is unclear.

2] if it were 'between the year 2000 to 2010' then it would have been clear.
That why I didn't choose E since I didn't feel it was the best option.

3] I also have a few questions wrt the parallelism in A and E

A-- with centers in 38 states and which employs.....--This had a parallelism issue ie prepositional phrase and clause cannot be parallel

Now for E -- which has centers in 38 states and employs ...

Don't we need to repeat "which" between and & employs (which has centers in 38 states AND which employs)for parallelism?

4]Moreover, Please look at this sentence in Sydney Morning Herald
"Between 2000 and 2010, the report said, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost $1.07 billion in revenue when comparing each state's best snowfall years with its worst snowfall years."

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/clima ... 2bayh.html

Here -- [with centers ..AND which employs....] construction is used .

5]So this construction is correct?? or incorrect?

Thanks a lot in advance.
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by e-GMAT » Thu Jan 17, 2013 9:12 am
Hi dentobizz,
Thanks for spelling out your doubts so clearly. I will address each doubt one by one. So bear with me :) I must say all your questions are very good. And the discussing these will surely be interesting...

Let's take your first question.
dentobizz wrote:
I have few doubts:--
1] I feel that Placement of 'between 2000 to 2010' after 'lost' makes the meaning ambiguous. Because the implication can be XXXXindustry ,lost, b/w 2000-2010 dollars?? people?? no quantifier is mentioned thus the meaning is unclear.

2] if it were 'between the year 2000 to 2010' then it would have been clear.
That why I didn't choose E since I didn't feel it was the best option.
When we read the original sentence, we infer or understand the intended meaning of the sentence. We make sure that we understand the function or role played by every entity in the sentence. So in this case, when we read Choice A, we know that "Between 2000 and 2010" refers to the year "2000 and 2010". It is understood from the context of the sentence. So yes - by explicitly stating the noun "year" before 2000 and 2010 will make things absolutely clear.
But the way this phrase has been used in choice A, there is no ambiguity about the fact that we are talking about years 2000 and 2010, or the time between these two years.

In fact, you will find several references in OG in which whenever a certain year is specified, it is not preceded by the word "year". Let's take a couple here:

OG13 Question 77 - Choice A (Incorrect)
A 1972 agreement between Canada and the United States reduced the amount of phosphates that municipalities had been allowed to dump into the Great Lakes.

In this sentence, concentrate on the non-underlined portion "A 1972 agreement". Even though the sentence does not explicitly state "An agreement written in 1972" or "An agreement written in the year 1972", the logical interpretation is that 1972 agreement implies that this agreement was written in the year 1972.

Here is another one:
OG13 Question 9 - Choice C (Incorrect)
In 1979 lack of rain reduced India's rice production to about 41 million tons, nearly 25 percent less than those of the 1978 harvest.

(A) less than those of the 1978 harvest

(B) less than the 1978 harvest

(C) less than 1978

(D) fewer than 1978

(E) fewer than that of India's 1978 harvest

In this sentence it is absolutely clear that 1979 and 1978 are the years. But for a moment, let's apply your logic on the correct sentence here - choice B. The 1978 harvest could imply "the 1978 million tons harvest". i.e. 1978 could actually present the quantity of harvest (yes the Math will not add up here!!). But see that that would not be the most logical interpretation.

These official references should clarify the logical interpretation of the "2000" & "2010" in your mind. So basically follow your logical thinking. I think you may have been overthinking this aspect.

Now let's come back to the question in discussion. So now that you have analyzed the original sentence and you know that "between 2000 and 2010" describes the time frame of the verb "lost", you review the remaining choices and make sure that the placement of this modifier does not result in any illogical meaning. i.e. between 2000 and 2010 should not provide timing of anything else except the intended modified entity "lost". Notice that the key thing here is that the function of this phrase is to present timing. Its function will not change to presenting some other quantity just because now it is placed at a different location.

Take Away - Follow your logical thought process!

Let me know if this helps.

Happy Learning!
Payal
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by e-GMAT » Thu Jan 17, 2013 9:15 am
dentobizz wrote:
3] I also have a few questions wrt the parallelism in A and E

A-- with centers in 38 states and which employs.....--This had a parallelism issue ie prepositional phrase and clause cannot be parallel

Now for E -- which has centers in 38 states and employs ...

Don't we need to repeat "which" between and & employs (which has centers in 38 states AND which employs)for parallelism?
Good question. The answer is NO. You do not need to repeat "which". Here "which" has been kept common. i.e. it applies to both "has centers in 38 states" and "employs...".
If you are an e-GMAT student then please refer to the concept file "Parallelism - Helpful Tips". This aspect of taking some words as common is actually one of the helpful tips discussed in this concept file.

- Payal
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by e-GMAT » Thu Jan 17, 2013 9:33 am
Ok last one here :)
dentobizz wrote:
3] I also have a few questions wrt the parallelism in A and E

4]Moreover, Please look at this sentence in Sydney Morning Herald
"Between 2000 and 2010, the report said, the $10.7 billion ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and which employs 187,000 people directly or indirectly, lost $1.07 billion in revenue when comparing each state's best snowfall years with its worst snowfall years."

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/clima ... 2bayh.html

Here -- [with centers ..AND which employs....] construction is used .

5]So this construction is correct?? or incorrect?

Thanks a lot in advance.
This construction is not correct. We cannot have a phrase parallel to a clause. In fact there are multiple ways of making this list parallel, such as:
1: Ski and snowboarding industry, with centers in 38 states and employing 187,000 people (Here both entities are phrases)
2: Ski and snowboarding industry, which has centers in 38 states and employs 187,000 people (Here both entities are clauses)
Just an interesting side note - This sentence also appears in nytimes here. In fact both publications have the same article. It was published just a day before the article on Sydney Morning Herald was published. Not sure if there is a tie up between these two publications. But regardless of that - carefully notice the list in the nytimes article. It uses the correct parallel construction per option 1 above.
Again, it is possible that this was just a publishing error or an error that did not get caught through the editorial process. Happens, after all "To err is Human" �

I believe similar discussion is on on GMAT Club as well. There are some additional questions regarding parallelism, which we will be addressing there first and then we will also post key take aways here for the benefit of those who are on BTG. :)
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