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exceed by far or far exceed?

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exceed by far or far exceed?

by M811 » Sun May 23, 2010 8:51 am
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Some scientists have been critical of the laboratory tests conducted by the Federal Drug Administration on the grounds that the amounts of suspected carcinogens fed to animals far exceeds those that humans could consume.

(A) far exceeds those that humans could consume

(B) exceeds by far those humans can consume

(C) far exceeds those humans are able to consume

(D) exceed by far those able to be consumed by humans

(E) far exceed those that humans could consume


OA E

Though i was able to rule the options, but just want to understand the the difference between exceed by far or far exceed
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by sk818020 » Sun May 23, 2010 10:49 am
I think its obvious that you ruled out A, B, and C because the plural form of exceed was needed. After this I believe the problem because one of concision.

Exceed by far and far exceed express similar ideas. The rule is that if there is an option to express and idea you use the one that expresses that idea with less words. Thus, we would choose far exceed because it is less wordy than exceed by far.

Hope that helps.

Thanks,

Jared
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by Patrick_GMATFix » Sun May 23, 2010 12:48 pm
X exceeds by far Y would be ok as long as X and Y are comparable (parallelism). Below are the problems with the answers that use "exceed by far"

B) Subject-Verb disagreement. amounts...exceedS.
D) "those able to be consumed by humans" is wordy and passive. It's not even close (quality wise) to "those that humans could consume" which is active.

A detailed explanation of this question is available. This is GMATPrep question 2077. If you have access to the Solutions Engine, you can find and practice similar questions by searching for questions of topic="Subject-Verb Agreement" and difficult="500-600"

Hope this helps,
-Patrick
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by GmatGreen » Sun May 23, 2010 8:32 pm
how can we search for Qs of specific topic?
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by sk818020 » Sun May 23, 2010 9:40 pm
GmatGreen wrote:how can we search for Qs of specific topic?
If you pay for the service.
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by Patrick_GMATFix » Sun May 23, 2010 11:56 pm
GmatGreen wrote:how can we search for Qs of specific topic?
Once you register you will be asked whether you would like a License. you get to try everything in the Solutions Engine for 2 weeks. Some of the features are:

*All GMATPrep solutions
*All solutions organized by topic and by difficulty
*Video solutions
*Custom timed drills (select the topic/difficulty you wish to include)
*Performance Report (maps your performance to each topic so you can track progress and adapt)

So the first 2 weeks you won't have to pay for. After that, you can then decide whether the service is worth paying for.
sk818020 wrote:If you pay for the service
Thanks for responding. Of course to get full access to prep materials from any company you need to pay for the tools. I would encourage you to try it for a couple of weeks and then let everyone know what you think of the Solutions Engine.

Hope that helps,
-Patrick
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by Stacey Koprince » Tue May 25, 2010 9:25 am
Received a PM asking me to respond.

In terms of meaning, there's no real difference between the two. After narrowing to D and E (assuming you understand why "exceedS" is wrong), you'd want to look at the other parts of the sentence in order to decide.

It is the case that, if everything else is correct, the real test will prefer concision. But this is a preference, not a rule, so don't use that as a decision-making point unless you have to. The test also prefers active voice to passive voice (D is passive, E is active).
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