Uses of the irrational number e in fields other than pure mathematics

Dear sadovskiya,
I'm happy to respond. What's very tricky about this problem is the nested parallelism, that is, one parallel structure inside another.

It's perfectly true that with a single parallel structure, we absolutely would not repeat the word "and."
I want to do W and X and Y and Z.
Colloquially, one might say that for dramatic effect, but it would never be correct in the formalism demanded of the GMAT. It's unnecessarily wordy & redundant. That's perfectly clear.

It becomes very tricky when we nest parallelism, that is to say, when we put one parallel structure inside another. Let's start with this sentence:
He likes to read books and to take long walks at twilight.
That has simple parallelism --- the two infinitives in parallel, the two things this person likes to do. So far so good. Now, consider this sentence:
He likes to read mystery, Gothic novels, and books about the paranormal..
Again, perfectly fine simple parallelism --- here, the three things the person likes to read. Now, consider what happens when we combine all this information:
He likes to read mystery, Gothic novels, and books about the paranormal, and to take long walks at twilight..
That sentence is 100% grammatically correct. The subject matter is a bit to storybook for the GMAT, but the grammatical structure is typical of what could appear on the GMAT. Here, the parallelism of the different book types is the "inner parallelism", and the first "and" is for this list; the parallelism of the two infinitive phrases, what he likes to do, is the outer parallelism, and the second "and" is for that list. After the simple subject & verb, "he likes", we have two infinitive phrases in parallel, and inside the first of those infinitive phrases is a second parallel structure, the kinds of books. The two "and's" in this sentence have very different jobs are very different from doubling up "and's" in the same list.

One of the trickiest things about the GMAT SC is the way that almost any grammatical structure can be nested inside almost any other structure. GMAT SC sentences can be like "Russian dolls", with shorter structures nested inside larger structures, and the hardest thing to do with each conjunction & adverb & etc. it to figure out to which level of the sentence it applies.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Dear Mike, I really liked the word 'nested'. Gives a whole new dimension to solving an SC Q. Thanks for the tip. Hope others pick the intricacies too.

Uses of the irrational number e in fields other than pure mathematics are seen in the calculation of

• continuous compounding in finance,
• terminal velocity in the field of physics,
• exponential decay in chemistry, and
• the constructing of the standard Western twelve-tone scale in music.

(A) the constructing is not parallel to remaining nouns in the list.

(B) Uses of the irrational number e in fields other than pure mathematics are the calculation of continuous compounding in finance, terminal velocity in physics, exponential decay in chemistry, and in the constructing
same error as in A.
Also uses are not calculation of all the items in list. They are the applications in which e is used.

(C) Uses of the irrational number e in fields other than pure mathematics are shown in the calculation of continuous compounding in finance, terminal velocity in physics, exponential decay in chemistry, and the constructing
same error of parallelism repeats here.

(D) In fields other than pure mathematics, the irrational number e is used in the calculation of continuous compounding in finance, terminal velocity in the field of physics, and exponential decay in chemistry, and the construction
in the field of adds to the redundancy here.
and twice in the list of items spoils parallelism.

(E) In fields other than pure mathematics, the irrational number e is used

in the calculation of

continuous compounding in finance,
terminal velocity in physics, and
exponential decay in chemistry,

&
in the construction

of the standard Western twelve-tone scale in music.

This choice perfectly follows the parallelism.

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