A long-term study of some 1,000 physicians indicates that the more cof

After searching more about greater vs. more...I found the below explanation in Magoosh we site. And I am sorry DollySharma for quick judgement.

more vs. greater

When something countable increases, we use “more”

1) Holland has more tulips than does any other country in Western Europe.

Tulips are separate: you can count how many tulips you have.

When something uncountable increases, we also use also “more”

2) The US State of Georgia has more land than does the state of Pennsylvania.

3) It costs more to go to the ballgame than to go to the opera.

Land is an uncountable noun, and in #3, the implicit noun is “money”, which is also uncountable.

The question arises: when do we use “greater” rather than “more”? We use “greater” when the noun in question is a number. We can count the number of tulips, but a tulip itself is not a number. Some examples of nouns that are themselves numbers are: percent, interest rate, population, volume, distance, price, cost, and number.

4) The area of Georgia is greater than that of Pennsylvania.

5) The price of a trip to the ballgame is greater than the cost of a night at the opera.

6) Call option premia are greater when interest rates are higher.

(Notice, for certain economic quantities, we will use “higher” for an increase.) In general, things take “more” but numbers take “greater.” The “increasing” case is the easier of the two cases.

My simple feeling is that when we use mass nouns or abstract nouns that are taken as in-disparate or inseparable, then we have to use ‘greater’. To wit

This year’s flood damage is greater than last year’s. --- One cannot count damage.
India has greater prosperity than many neighbors.
Disappointment is greater in adolescence than in adulthood.

Isn’t likelihood something that cannot be counted as one likelihood or two likelihoods?

Therefore ‘greater’ is the more appropriate word in the context.

Hello dear colleagues..) I picked the right answer, but it was just a guess, it just looked better for me, but here is an explanation for More VS Greater from a GMAT Expert:

the following rule will work in the vast majority of cases:
* if you are dealing with a word that literally describes a numerical quantity (number, rate, height, length, volume, population, etc.), then you should use “greater”.
The population of Colombia is greater than that of Argentina --> correct
The population of Colombia is more than that of Argentina --> incorrect

* if you are dealing with a word that describes some abstract characteristic of something (power, influence, effect, etc.), then you can use “a/an + greater” or "more" (the latter WITHOUT 'a/an').
John's father has had a greater influence on the development of his personality than has his mother. --> correct
The Prime Minister has more power than the King, even though the latter is the country's titular leader. --> correct

* if you are dealing with a word that describes things that you can actually count, then you should use “more”.
I have more sports jerseys than anyone else I know --> correct

* if you are dealing with an uncountable noun that is NOT a numerical quantity, then you should use “more”.
there is more furniture in this store than in the other one --> correct

Although your answer is correct, some of your explanations are not accurate based on Manhattan GMAT book. GREATER is actually used for uncountable things, NUMEROUS or MORE NUMEROUS is used for countable items. Here "likelihood" is not countable. The likelihood of having coronary disease is higher for those who drink certain amount of coffee.

Pls check the MGMAT Sentence correction book, pg. 200. for greater details

SS18, if you're being really strict and literal with the meaning here, (A) and (C) are both just a little bit illogical.

In (C), the clearest issue is that the verb tense is a little bit off. "... the more coffee the doctors drank, the more they would have a likelihood to have coronary disease." One problem is "would have" -- the phrase conditional, which doesn't make much sense here. We're looking at facts of a study: "the more x occurred, the more y occurred". Since these are facts, it wouldn't make sense to say: "the more x occurred, the more y would have occurred." There's simply no need to make the second part of the phrase conditional.

In (A), it doesn't make much sense to say "the more they had a likelihood." It makes sense to talk about the degree to which something is likely to occur: "a higher likelihood" or "a greater likelihood." But this is subtly different: (A) is saying "the more they had a likelihood" -- which seems to express "likelihood" as a binary thing, that you either have or you don't -- so now (A) seems to say that the more the physicians drank, the higher the odds of having a likelihood. And that doesn't make much sense. (C) suffers from the same problem, too.

I hope this helps!

Hello Everyone!

Wow - this is a tricky question! Let's take a closer look at it to figure out how to arrive at the correct answer quickly! Before we get started, here is the original question with the major differences highlighted in orange:

A long-term study of some 1,000 physicians indicates that the more coffee these doctors drank, the more they had a likelihood of coronary disease.

(A) more they had a likelihood of coronary disease
(B) more was their likelihood of having coronary disease
(C) more they would have a likelihood to have coronary disease
(D) greater was their likelihood of having coronary disease
(E) greater was coronary disease likely

I can tell from the other comments in this section that we need to address the more vs. greater debate. For this particular sentence, here is how we need to interpret the rule:

more = countable objects / uncountable things that increase
The longer you study for your exams, the more pencils you'll need to sharpen to take notes.
My youngest child has more temper tantrums than her older sister.
(Both pencils and temper tantrums are items you can count.)

greater = nouns that are acting as, or taking the place of, a number (area, price, volume, distance, percentage, likelihood, chances, etc.)
The area of Australia is greater than that of Texas.
(The area of Australia is a number - square kilometers, acres, square miles, etc. They just don't tell us the exact number in the sentence.)
The percentage of teenagers who fail their first driver's test is greater than those who pass.
(A percentage is always a number...they just don't tell us the exact number in the sentence.)

The more/greater in this sentence is referring back to "likelihood," which is actually a noun acting as a number/percentage! The likelihood that doctors will develop coronary disease is a percentage (30%, 60%, 1 in 3, etc.). The sentence just doesn't tell us the actual percentage - it just says that there is one, and that will increase if doctors drink more coffee. Therefore, it makes the most sense to use "greater" in this case.

Therefore, we can eliminate options A, B, & C because they use "more" incorrectly.

Now that we're only left with two options, let's see which option is the better choice:

(D) greater was their likelihood of having coronary disease

This is CORRECT because the word "greater" is correctly referring to the likelihood of a doctor developing coronary disease, not the disease itself!

(E) greater was coronary disease likely

This is INCORRECT because it muddles up the meaning. The thing that's greater in this sentence is the likelihood a doctor gets coronary disease, not the coronary disease itself.

There you have it - option D is the correct choice!


Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it.

"the more coffee these doctors drank, the more they had a likelihood of coronary disease

we can eliminate A because of improper past perfect tense.
(C) the more coffee these doctors drank, the more they would have a likelihood to have coronary disease
first part is in past tense, the conditional + present perfect tense they would have a likelihood........correct me if I'm wrong
(E) greater was coronary disease likely...............terrible construction

left options
(B) more was their likelihood of having coronary disease
(D) greater was their likelihood of having coronary disease


Dolly your argument seems good. However I cant understand why we cant use more for greater?

Thanks for correcting that mbaprep2016 , though i'm more interested in the validity of the clause parallelism.

Here's the updated sentence -
"Studies indicate that not only are GMAT Club students smarter than other students but they also score significantly higher than do the rest"

I don't see any not only...(clause1)...but also...(clause 2)... parallelism problem in this sentence (even though in the second clause the subject "they" comes in between "but" and "also").

More on option B vs greater in option d

When a quantifiable parameter (e.g., price, area, volume, density, speed, probability, likelihood etc.) is referred, "greater" is used. Hence, option D is better than option B.

This question confused me quite some bit. I have kind of made sense about why greater is a better choice than more but I can't understand why "had a likelihood" or "likelihood to have" in A and C respectively, is wrong. Please help.

You have to know that likelihood is "greater" or "lesser" and not "more" or "less" to solve it.

For instance, we can't say "the likelihood is more"

We have to say "the likelihood is greater", it has to be a numerical comparison.

First glance

The choices start with one of two options: more or greater. Both words are modifiers indicating quantity, but they are used differently. Think about the meaning of the sentence as you read it.

Issues

(1) Modifier / Meaning: more

More and greater are both used to compare quantities. Consider these examples:

Vanessa has studied more than you. (correct)

Vanessa has studied greater than you. (incorrect)

The more you study, the greater your chances of success on the GMAT. (correct)

The greater you study, the more your chances of success on the GMAT. (incorrect)

Why are the incorrect options incorrect? In the first sentence (studied more), the distinction is based on quantity; perhaps Vanessa has studied for four hours and you have studied for only two. In the second sentence (studied greater), the distinction is not based on number. Perhaps Vanessa has studied more effectively than you have? The meaning is unclear, so that’s not a great sentence.

In the third sentence (the more you study), you are changing your chances of success based on the amount that you study. If you don’t study as much, your chances aren’t as good, but if you do study more, then you increase your chances—they are greater than they would have been.

The fourth sentence, though, doesn’t say that your chances increase. It says that your chances are more. You could give yourself more chances to succeed by, for example, taking the test multiple times—but that’s not what this sentence is trying to convey.

In the question, the sentence is trying to convey that, if the doctors drink more coffee, then their chances of having coronary disease increase. The proper form, then, is the more coffee [they] drank, the greater their chances (or likelihood) of having coronary disease.

In general, use the modifier greater, not the modifier more, to pair with the word likelihood. Eliminate choices (A), (B), and (C).

(2) Meaning: have a likelihood to have

The wording have a likelihood to have is redundant. The two instances of have are conveying the same meaning. Eliminate choice (C).

(3) Modifier / Meaning: greater was disease likely

What was actually greater? The disease itself is not greater; rather, the likelihood of having the disease was greater. The wording in choice (E), though, changes the word likelihood to the word likely. You can say that something is more likely to happen, but it’s not acceptable to say that something is greater likely to happen. Eliminate choice (E).

The Correct Answer

Correct answer (D) uses the accepted form the more coffee they drink, the greater was their likelihood. (You could also use the following form: The more you study, the greater your likelihood of success.)

If we compare first few words of answer choices, we see a split between ‘more’ and ‘greater’. If we read the sentence, we have ’more coffee….’, correct idiom is ‘the more the X, the greater the Y’. Eliminate A, B and C. We need greater.
In option E, ‘the greater coronary disease is not parallel to ‘the more coffee these doctors ….’. Eliminate E.
Hence D is the correct answer.

A long-term study of some 1,000 physicians indicates that the more coffee these doctors drank, the more they had a likelihood of coronary disease.

(A) more they had a likelihood of coronary disease
(B) more was their likelihood of having coronary disease
(C) more they would have a likelihood to have coronary disease
(D) greater was their likelihood of having coronary disease
(E) greater was coronary disease likely

This is an interesting question!

I would like to jot down what I have understood based on my knowledge.

more ===> used for countable nouns and uncountable nouns that are not quantity nouns/words

greater ==> used for uncountable nouns that are quantity nouns/words

Considering above points, we have the noun "likelihood" (uncountable noun) which means "probability" (quantity noun), we should be using the word "greater" here for comparison purposes.

Hence, Option A, B and C are out (Though there are other errors in A and C which I will not write as GMAT Ninja has explained it in great detail)

We are left with option D and E

Option E has multiple errors and such as it is un-idiomatic and uses an adjective "greater" to describe an adverb "likely" which is ungrammatical

We are now only left with D after POE.

Hence, Answer is D

Did you like the answer? Hit Kudos

Hi,
can we eliminate option B on the below basis-
The idiom in B is as follows:
The more X, the more Y.
In this idiom, the more cannot be followed by a verb- The more coffee these doctors drank, the more was their likelihood
The comparison in B is not grammatically viable.

Hello sunny91,

I am not sure if you still have this doubt. Here is the explanation nonetheless.


The reason that you have presented cannot be used to reject Choice B.

If you compare the structure of Choice B with the correct answer choice D, they both are identical except for the word more in Choice B and greater in Choice D.

Hence, the reason that more cannot be followed by a verb is not sound enough to reject Choice B.


Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha