According to United States census data, while there was about one-thir

A. while there was about one-third of mothers with young children working outside the home in 1975, in 2000, almost two-thirds of those mothers were employed outside the home. - Incorrect - Subject Verb Agreement error - 'mothers' is plural. So 'there were' is the correct usage.

B. there were about one-third of mothers with young children who worked outside the home in 1975; in 2000, almost two-thirds of those mothers were employed outside the home - Incorrect - Meaning error - 'who' should refer to mothers and not children

C. in 1975 about one-third of mothers with young children worked outside the home; in 2000, almost two-thirds of such mothers were employed outside the home - Correct

D. even though in 1975 there were about one-third of mothers with young children who worked outside the home, almost two-thirds of such mothers were employed outside the home in 2000 - Incorrect - Same error as B

E. with about one-third of mothers with young children working outside the home in 1975, almost two-thirds of such mothers were employed outside the home in 2000 - Incorrect - Meaning error

Answer: C

I had one issue with answer choice C.

From my knowledge a semicolon is used to separate two independent clauses, which can stand alone.

In choice C however after the semi colon the words 'two-thirds of such mothers' is relating this clause back to the first clause and therefore is not independent.

Could someone please explain the gap in my understanding.

Thanks in advance !!

In 2000, almost two-thirds of mothers with young children worked were employed outside the home. --> The second clause can stand on its own and conveys the meaning without any dependency on the first clause. Also, if there are 2 independent clauses a pronoun in the 2nd independent clause can refer back to the noun in the first independent clause. Similarly, the usage of 'such mothers' refers back to 'mothers with young children'.

Hi mikemcgarry, GMATNinjaTwo, GMATNinja, MagooshExpert Carolyn,
sayantanc2
VeritasPrepKarishma

I hesitate the choice between C and D,
eventually, i picked up D, because i thought the subject "one-third of women" follows "according to the United States census date" is illogical, i thought some date or some studies are according to the United States census date, rather than people are according to the United States census data

OA is C, I thought i must miss something, would you please elaborate further what should follows "according to ..."

Further more, are the following two sentences correct?
Based on the accounts of ancient observers, historians have pieced together a reasonably accurate picture of the original Greek Olympic Games
according to the accounts of ancient observers, historians have pieced together a reasonably accurate picture of the original Greek Olympic Games


Thanks in advance

Have a nice day
>_~

Neither of those is correct. The first one implies that the historians are "based on" the accounts. This is something that would pass in everyday usage--we know that the historians' work, rather than the historians themselves--is what is based on the accounts. But technically, "based on" needs to modify a noun, and there's no correct noun for it to modify in your version. We'd need something like "Based on the accounts of ancient observers, historians' current understanding of the situation is that . . . "

The second one implies that the ANCIENT ACCOUNTS are telling us what historians are doing NOW. "According to X, Y is true" means that I know Y because X says so. So anything that starts with "According to ancient observers" needs to follow by telling us what happened in the past, NOT what people now think happened. Contrast that with the original q, which says "According to US census data." All we need after that is what is true about the US.

Could someone help me out with this?

Option C - "...one-third of mothers with young children worked outside the home..". The participle "worked" seems to again modify the young children and not the mother. Why is this considered correct but on the contrary using "working" makes it incorrect.

In (C) "worked" isn't a participle - it's the main verb of the clause. "In 1975 about one-third of mothers with young children worked outside the home." If we removed "worked" we clearly wouldn't have a complete sentence anymore. The "young children" are part of the prepositional phrase describing the mothers, and therefore cannot do double-duty as the subject of "worked" as well. (If you like jargon: the more technical way of saying this is that a noun cannot both be the object of a prepositional phrase and the main subject of the sentence.) It has to be the mothers who worked. So there's no ambiguity - or violation of child labor laws - here.

I hope that helps!

One additional reason why A, B, and D are out: use of word "there" without referring to a physical location. GMATNinja Is this actually a hard rule (=statement is definitely wrong) or more of a soft rule (=correct use sounds better, but can't reject statement without additional errors)? I feel its more like a soft rule. Thanks!

For starters, there are very, very few "hard rules" that will ALWAYS apply on the GMAT. Subject-verb agreement is a "hard rule." I can't think of too many others -- most things presented online as "rules" have an exception of one sort or another.

In this particular case, the word "there" doesn't have to refer to a physical location at all. The phrase "there is" (or "there are" or "there were") just indicate that something exists. For example, if I say "there are several 11-month-olds who are capable of eating an entire avocado in a single sitting", I'm just saying that gluttonous 11-month-olds exist. (Not coincidentally, my 11-month-old is one of them. She makes dad proud with her epic appetite.) No physical location is needed or implied by the phrase "there is" or "there are."

For another example, check out this classic official question.

I hope this helps!

EducationAisle egmat

Can't modifiers "who" and verb-ing jump over adjective modifier "with young children"?

I know that these modifiers first have to modify young children and if it doesn't make sense then they can jump over. I would argue that modifying "young children" doesn't make sense so these modifiers can jump over and modify mothers.

From the discussion, it seems these modifiers can't jump over because it makes sense for these modifiers to modify "children"?

If the sentence was - mothers with glasses who worked outside/working outside...

So here it would jump over because "who" or "working" doesn't make ANY sense modifying glasses?

Also are all the above mentioned rules applicable to verb-ed modifiers?

Thank you

who can definitely jump over a prepositional phrase. However, we need to realize that this is not an ideal situation.

Hence, C is a better construct in this regard (in addition to other issues with B that have been discussed earlier in this thread).

Hi GMATNinja/Other Experts
I used the following reasoning, apparently part of it from one of your post on a similar question perhaps, kindly englighten if it's correct.
A, B:"those mothers" is wrong as the same mothers are not the part of the two census in albeit two years mentioned
D, E: these two sentences are "run-on" as neither [color=#ff0000]"even though" or "with" is a subordinator (if, unless, although, after, before, so on, so that, although, because) nor a [FANBOYS]

Moreover parallelism is also a problem in these options
A,E: "working" is not parallel with "were employed"
B, D: "who worked" is not parallel with "were employed", it must be "who were employed"

Also, the usage of "with" in E is not justified.

I was unable to see the reasoning of children working or mother working in my first glance.
[/color]

Your reasoning for eliminating (A) and (B) is perfect - nice work!

Your reasoning for (D) and (E) isn't valid. "Even though" can link two clauses, so (D) isn't a run-on. "Even though John purchased nearly every toy in the store, his infant executed a successful coup when John returned home without any organic cheese bunnies." (Yes, organic cheese bunnies are a thing.)

And in (E) there's only one clause, so there's no run-on sentence.

Better to eliminate these options because their meanings are illogical - both make it sound as though the children are working outside the home, rather than their mothers.

I hope that helps!

Thanks as always! I could relate to the logical meaning highlighted. But can below reasoning as pointed earlier is valid and can be re-used elsewhere if not in this question.

Just one more doubt, is the parallelism reasoning valid?
A,E: working not parallel with were employed
B, D: who worked is not parallel with were employed, it must be who were employed for being parallel

I guess "with" in E suppose to imply if the US consensus data posses something and is thereby incorrect.

As discussed in this post and in this post and this video, parallelism is only relevant if you have some sort of trigger (i.e. "and", "or", etc.) that indicates a list (of verbs, nouns, modifiers, etc.) -- and we don't have any triggers that would indicate parallelism with those particular phrases.

Take a look at (B), for example: "who worked" and "were employed" aren't even in the same clause, so there's no reason why you would need them to be parallel.

I hope that helps!

GMATNinja daagh egmat.

Does "those mothers" refer to the set of mothers we discussed about in 1975? Shouldnt "they" be used for same entries and "those" be used for different set of people?

For example,
students studying arts are smarter than those studying science. - Here those refers to another set of students.
Students are more happy when they study science than when they study arts. - Here "They" refers to the same set of students.

So I believe that "those" is correctly used in B. Can you share your opinions?

ArtVandaley

That move only works when "those" is modified in a different way. For instance, you contrasted students studying arts with those studying science. In B, by contrast, we have the phrase "those mothers," which creates an explicit reference to the same group of mothers from the first half of the sentence.

Note also that the first part doesn't make sense. We can't say "there were about one-third of mothers with young children who worked outside the home." First, it doesn't mean anything to say "There were one-third" (even if we ignore the plural verb). There are always THREE thirds of any group, so saying that one third simply existed doesn't have any useful meaning. We then modify "mothers with young children" with "who worked outside the home." It doesn't clearly modify "one-third," but rather "mothers with young children." We might let the modifier jump over "children" to "mothers," but not all the way to "one-third." Compare to these examples:

WRONG: There are one-third of Americans who support the president.
RIGHT: One third of Americans support the president.
WRONG: There were half of professors of education in the United States without doctorates.
RIGHT: Half of the professors of education in the United States did not have doctorates.