santosh93 wrote:
Could you please explain elaborately option by option like you answer for other SC questions?
GMATNinjaQuote:
(A) Despite the growing number of people who purchase plane tickets online, airline executives are convinced that, just as one-third of bank customers still prefer human tellers to automatic teller machines, many travelers will still use travel agents.
The first thing that jumps out is the "just as." We need something that can be logically compared to the phrase "
one-third of bank customers still
prefer human tellers to automatic teller machines" (a clause with a subject and a verb). And what we get is, "many
travelers will still use travel agents" (another clause with a subject and a verb).
So the "just as" is properly used to compare two clauses. And does the comparison make sense? Sure! Using travel agents even though you can purchase tickets online is certainly comparable to using human bank tellers even though you can use an ATM.
(A) doesn't have any glaring issues, and the comparison looks great. Let's hang on to this one.
Quote:
(B) Despite the growing number of people who purchase plane tickets online, airline executives are convinced, just as one-third of bank customers still prefer human tellers to automatic teller machines, that many travelers would still use travel agents.
The biggest difference here is that the "just as" part comes BEFORE the "that." This tiny little change actually changes the meaning entirely. It now seems as though we are comparing "one-third of bank customers still prefer human tellers to automatic teller machines" to "airline executives are convinced" -- the airline execs are CONVINCED just as the bank customers PREFER. That's not the comparison we want, so (A) is a much better option.
As others have noted earlier in the thread, the "would" isn't appropriate here since we don't have a conditional situation. But I wouldn't get into the weeds of the conditional stuff here -- the comparison makes no sense, so (B) has to go.
Quote:
(C) Despite the growing number of people purchasing plane tickets online, airline executives are convinced, just as one-third of bank customers still prefer human tellers as compared to automatic teller machines, many travelers will still use travel agents.
(C) omits the "that" entirely, but I'd still say we have the same issue that we encountered in (B). Without the word "that" after "are convinced," it sounds like we are illogically comparing "airline executives are convinced" to "one-third of bank customers still prefer human tellers to automatic teller machines."
Sure, you could argue that the "that" is implied, so why not assume the implied "that" goes before the "just as"? But, again, omitting the "that" sure makes it look like we have the same illogical comparison that we saw in (B). Can you figure out the appropriate meaning? Sure. But the logical meaning is much clearer in (A).
Another vote in favor of (A) over (C) is that we want "prefer [X] to [Y]," not "prefer [X] as compared to [Y]."
(A) is still the best option so far, so let's get rid of (C).
Quote:
(D) Despite the fact that the number of people purchasing plane tickets online is growing, airline executives are convinced, just as one-third of bank customers still prefer human tellers as compared to automatic teller machines, that many travelers would still use travel agents.
(D) has the same comparison issue that we saw in (B) and the same idiom issue that we saw in (C) ("prefer [X] as compared to [Y]"). I wouldn't say that the reworded "despite..." clause is
wrong, but it certainly doesn't seem any better than the wording in (A). And we have the problematic "would" that we saw in (B).
That gives us more than enough reason to eliminate (D).
Quote:
(E) Despite the fact that the number of people who purchase plane tickets online are growing, airline executives are convinced that, just as one-third of bank customers still prefer human tellers compared with automatic teller machines, many travelers would still use travel agents.
The comparison looks good in (E). But we have a glaring subject-verb agreement error: "... the number of people...
are growing." "Number" is singular, so it should be "is" instead of "are."
That's enough reason to get rid of (E), but here are a couple other small votes in favor of (A) over (E):
- The wording of the opening "despite..." clause seems unnecessarily wordy in (E). Again, I don't think that makes it wrong, but the wording in (A) is simpler and clearer.
- "just as one-third of bank customers still prefer human tellers compared with automatic teller machines" - The "compared with" doesn't really work here. We want to say that bank customers prefer [X] to [Y]. At first glance, "compared with" seems to modify "human tellers" (What do bank customers prefer? Human tellers [that are] compared with automatic teller machines.). Obviously that doesn't make any sense. The reader also might think that we are comparing the bank customers themselves with automatic teller machines, and that doesn't make any sense either.
- As in (B), the "would" isn't appropriate here since we don't have a conditional situation.
(E) is gone, and we're left with (A).
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