hadimadi wrote:
GMATNinjaHi,
according the the Manhattan SC guide, if one shall use ' x times as...as' when relating quantities by multiplication:
Right: I am five times as old as my son
Wrong: I am five times older than my son
Also according to MSC guide, one shall use 'x times more than / less than' when referring to addition / substraction:
I am ten years older than you.
When I look at option (E), it uses 'ten times more prevelant than', meaning 10x more than something else. But this is clearly the first case I quoted from the MSC guide. Should 'ten times as prevelant as in...' be used here?
Thanks
Consider an example. Imagine that Tim is 50 and his son is 10. It makes sense to say that Tim is five times as old as his son, since 10 * 5 = 50.
Could you argue that because 50 is 400%
greater than 10, you can also write, "Tim is four times
older than his son?" I don't love the way it hits my ear, but I'm hesitant to say it's wrong.
The same thing would apply to prevalence. If something occurs in 10% of the population, it's ten times as prevalent as something that occurs in 1% of the population.
But if something occurs in 11% of the population, it's ten times
more prevalent than something that occurs in 1% of the population.
In other words, I'd be careful about making any generalizations here. If you see two constructions making a comparison and one is less clear than the other, well, that's one thing. But if both seem pretty clear, and they just happen to be communicating slightly different bits of info, I'd avoid using it as a decision point.
I hope that helps!
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