Hi,

This is a tricky one. I think what helps differentiate the answers is to think about what the comparison is: Women under the age of thirty VS. Women over the age of thirty

And the structure is: More X than Y

or with the story filled in: More Women over the age thirty than under the age of thirty

The other thing that helps is to fill in the noun/noun phrase that the pronoun "it" is replacing. Replacing pronouns is often helpful in SC. It's good to make this a habit.

Answer B is wrong because you have were born on one side of the comparison and only born on the other side. You need to have were born on both sides or nothing at all (in this case the were born is distributed to the second half of the comparison). It's a bit like a list in which you can have the bar, the plane, and the floor or the bar, plane, and floor but not the plane, bar, and the floor. Either you need to have every element or just let the first element distribute. In general, you cannot mix and match.

Another strategy here is to re-arrange the sentence: More babies were born to woman over the age of thirty than (were born to) woman under the age of thirty in the state of Mass. in 1998.

Let me know if you need more advice on this one.

Happy Studies,

HG.
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Hi,

I hope that you are well. I'm not exactly sure what your question is but let's take a look at another example:

In 2013 more profits were earned by Coca Cola than were earned by Pepsi
Were earned by CC is parallel to Were earned by Pepsi

In 2013 more profits were earned by Coca Cola than by Pepsi
By CC is parallel to By Pepsi and the were earned applies to both

In 2013 more profits were earned by Coca Cola than earned by Pepsi
Were earned by CC is NOT parallel to earned by Pepsi

The first two are equivalent. The last is incorrect and very similar to answer choice B.

Happy Studies,

HG.
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"It is a curious property of research activity that after the problem has been solved the solution seems obvious. This is true not only for those who have not previously been acquainted with the problem, but also for those who have worked over it for years." -Dr. Edwin Land

"Learning hurts but enlightenment keeps you company along the way" -HerrGrau

If you found my post useful KUDOS are much appreciated.

Hi there,

According to public health officials, in 1998 Massachusetts became the first state in which more babies were born to women over the age of thirty than under it.

It is important to understand the intended meaning of the sentence.
• This sentence presents comparison. We need to find out what are the entities that are compared here.
• In 1998, Massachusetts became the first state in which more babies were born to woman who were over the age of 30 than to those woman who were under the age of 30.
• The entities compared here the woman over 30 and woman under 30.

Now let’s see what the Errors are in this sentence:
Now there is just one word underlined in this sentence. The idiom used in this sentence is “…more babies are born to X than Y”. Here X and Y should be parallel.
X = woman over the age of thirty (noun phrase)
Y = (woman) under it (it = the age of thirty)
Since bot the entities are parallel here, there is no error in this sentence.

PoE:

A. than: Correct for the reason stated above.

B. than born: Incorrect. This choice leads to illogical comparison. Per this choice, entity Y = (babies) born under it (it = the age of thirty). This means the babies were under the age of 30. This is absolutely non-sensical.

C. than they were: Incorrect. Firstly, pronoun “they” is ambiguous here. If “they” refers to “babies”, then also it leads to illogical meaning and if “they” refers to “women”, then also lead to illogical meaning.

D. than there had been: Incorrect. This choice uses the incorrect verb tense as well as presents illogical comparison.

E. than had been born: Inocrrect. This choice repeats the verb tense error of choice D and illogical comparison error of choice B.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha
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Thanks so much you two

Basically we need to use this paradigm
In 2013 more profits were earned by Coca Cola than by Pepsi
By CC is parallel to By Pepsi and the were earned applies to both

Choice B repeats the last paradigm (incorrect parallelism)

The simplicity of this problem made me solve it in less than 20 seconds. Bad move!
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