Comparison Question

[gmatpart2]

I have two comparison questions here:

1) A result of the recent election is realizing that in this increasingly urban areas, there is now more worry about crime than health care.

A: realizing that in this increasingly urban areas, there is now more worry about crime
B: the realization that in this increasingly urban areas, they now worry more about crime
C: the realization that in this increasingly urban areas, voters now worry more about crime
D: a realizing that in this increasingly urban areas, there is now more concern about crime
E: the realization that in this increasingly urban areas, concerns about crime are greater

[spoiler]OA: C [/spoiler]

2) Though laypeople often refer to the panda as a bear, due to its physical resemblance to one, DNA testing has shown that it is more closely related to the common raccoon than any member of the bear family.
A. due to its physical resemblance to one, DNA testing has shown that it is more closely related to the common raccoon than
B. due to the fact that it physically resembles one, DNA testing showed that it is more closely related to the common raccoon than is
C. because of its physical resemblance to one, DNA testing has shown that it is more closely related to the common raccoon than
D. because of its resemblance to one physically, DNA testing has shown that it is more closely related to the common raccoon than is
E. because of its physical resemblance to one, DNA testing has shown that it is more closely related to the common raccoon than to

[spoiler]OA: E[/spoiler]

Though I reached the correct answers by POE for both questions, I am not very sure of the ways the comparisons have been made in the two questions. In the first question, the two entities being compared are "Crime" and "health care" and thus parallelism should be enforced. So ideally, shouldn't the preposition "about" have preceded the word "health care"?

In the second question, the entities being compared are "common raccoon" and "any member of the bear family". Here, in the correct answer both items being compared have the preposition "to" preceding them.

Please explain how and why is the pattern of comparison different (in terms of usage of the preposition before words being compared) in the two questions?

[Jim@StratusPrep]

The difference is that if you do not include the 'to' in the second example then the panda is more closely related to the raccoon than any other any is related to the raccoon - this is not what the sentence intends.

About is implied in the first sentence and its removal does not change the meaning.

Hope that helps...

[ceilidh.erickson]

In the first question, the two entities being compared are "Crime" and "health care" and thus parallelism should be enforced. So ideally, shouldn't the preposition "about" have preceded the word "health care"?

It would have been perfectly correct for "about" to precede "health care," but it's also fine without it. In the second example here, the "about" is implied, because from a meaning perspective, that's all that can be compared.
Voters worry more about crime than about health care.
Voters worry more about crime than health care.

That said, the GMAT will usually include the preposition. This sentence - in all of the answer choices - has a serious flaw: you can't say "THIS increasingly urban AREAS." Beware of studying from any sources that contain grammatical errors like this!

In the second question, the entities being compared are "common raccoon" and "any member of the bear family". Here, in the correct answer both items being compared have the preposition "to" preceding them.

Here, the difference is one of meaning. We want to compare "raccoon" to "any member of the bear family," but that's not necessarily what's being compared. Consider the following sentence:

I want to eat a hamburger more than my dog.

Well, this could mean that I want to eat a hamburger more than my dog wants to eat a hamburger, or it could mean that I want to eat a hamburger more than I want to eat my dog! I'd need to add something to make it clear whether "dog" is the comparative subject or object:

I want to eat a hamburger more than my dog does. -> My dog also wants to eat a hamburger.
I want to eat a hamburger more than I do my dog. -> I want to eat my dog.

You example is somewhat similar. It's possible that it's saying "the panda is more closely related to the raccoon than it is to the bear," or it could be saying "the panda is more closely related to the raccoon than the bear is to the raccoon." Adding the preposition TO clarifies that it's the former, not the latter.

[rjain84]

Why is E an incorrect choice in the first sentence?

[ceilidh.erickson]

"Greater" here would change what's being compared:

...concerns (about crime) are greater than health care... implies that we're comparing CONCERNS to HEALTH CARE.

[Tommy Wallach]

Two things. First there's the "this" error that Ceilidh mentioned, which makes this whole question useless and terrible.

The error in (E) that this terrible author meant to include is the faulty comparison at the end:

"...concerns about crime are greater than health care."

The meant to compare two concerns: concerns about crime and concerns about health care. But in this case, they're comparing concerns about crime to health care itself. Make sense?

-t

[ceilidh.erickson]

Same reply one minute apart. Jinx!

[rjain84]

Got it! Thanks so much Ceilidh and Tommy for the explanations.