Even with the proposed budget cuts and new taxes and fees the city's

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What I know is , if you want to use past perfect tense - Then there should be a simple past tense for the later action and also both the action must be related with each other
Now in this question how announcement is related to prediction?

Someone please help me!!!!!
Thanks

Vatsal7794 They announced (simple past) that they believe the gap will be more than they had predicted two months ago.
How is the announcement related to their prediction? Well, their prior prediction (which was apparently too conservative) is the reason for the announcement.
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Thanks for the explanation.. Understood

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Also, check this: https://www.gmatclub.com/forum/veritas-prep-resource-links-no-longer-available-399979.html/2015/0 ... questions/
Past perfect without past.
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Hello Vatsal7794,

We hope this finds you well.

Having gone through the question and your query, we believe we can resolve your doubts.

The order of events here is as follows - two months ago, the officials predicted that the deficit for the next budget year would be a certain amount, and more recently the officials announced that it would actually be $3.7 billion, which is $1 billion above the earlier prediction. The relation between the two events is that through this announcement, the officials render their earlier predictions obsolete.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team
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Dear GMATNinja I've read all of your responses to this question, but I think a "what" is missing In D to be clear.

It seems to me that "a billion dollars" should be compared with a number. For example, what they had predicted just two months ago. Now, a billion dollars is just compared with a clause, they had predicted just two months ago.

Hello mha7091,

We hope this finds you well.

Having gone through the question and your query, we believe we can resolve your doubt.

Here, "a billion dollars" is not being compared to anything; it is part of the comparison. The meaning is that "$3.7 billion" is $1 billion more than the officials predicted.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team
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Consider something like this:

"Tim scored a 400 on the GMAT, 50 points higher than he expected."

There's no need to say, "50 points higher than the score that he expected." The meaning is perfectly clear without that repetition.

By the same token, there's no need to repeat the "ate" at the end of this sentence:

"Tim ate more than Homer."

We know that we aren't literally comparing the amount Tim ate to Homer himself -- we're comparing the amount Tim ate to the amount Homer ate.

Can you argue that the addition of a "what" in (D) would make the meaning would be incrementally more clear? Perhaps. But we don't have that option, and all of the other choices are flawed in much worse ways. So (D) is our winner, whether we like it or not.

I hope that helps!
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question on this one because I struggled between choice D and choice E.

The official GMAT answer (and all the explanations here) say that the sentence should use the past perfect instead of simple past. In other words, use "they had" instead of just "they."

However, the passage says the officials announced that "they believe" [...] "will be."

So isn't past simple still preferred. The amount predicted started in the past with no clear end date of this prediction and the new prediction is a future amount. It doesn't seem logical to conclude the past perfect should be used.

I'm aware the "it" is an issue in E but if we take that out and only focus on tense, can someone help me think about simple past vs past perfect in this SC?

If we took out the IT in E, this would be a different question, and IMO the GMAT will never have such a question.
Because, without the IT in E, we would have no good way of choosing between D and E.

Posted from my mobile device
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Following are the two events:

i) Administration officials announced <something>

ii) Before that announcement, these administration officials had predicted <something else>

So clearly, the prediction happened before the announcement, and hence, is expressed in past perfect.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses Past perfect tense, its application and examples in significant detail. If you or someone is interested, PM me your email-id; I can mail the corresponding section.
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Hi GMATNinja, IanStewart

First, thanks for your previous posts! They are highly informative and helpful. I just have some follow-up questions since the OG has different explanations for the use of "it," if I am not mistaken.

Even with the proposed budget cuts and new taxes and fees, the city's projected deficit for the next budget year is getting worse: administration officials announced that they believe the gap will be $3.7 billion, a billion dollars over what it was predicted just two months ago.

C) more than it was predicted
D) more than they had predicted
E) more than they predicted it

Focus: $3.7 billion will be a billion dollars over what it was predicted just two months ago.

My first thought was that the comparison should be between an amount and another amount--$3.7 billion and $2.7 billion. So, whatever follows the word "than" should carry the meaning of "amount" --we cannot compare the amount of $3.7 billion to an estimate or a prediction directly, although this might be something we do in spoken English. But, none of the options (C), (D) and (E) uses a word naming an amount after "than." Instead, we have either "it" or "they" following "than".

Though some previous posts in this thread concentrated on the pronoun ambiguity issue, I do not think there is pronoun ambiguity here, as "it" can only refer to the singular noun "gap" and "they" can logically refer to "the officials." So, the option (C) just says that $3.7 billion is a billion dollars more than the gap was predicted, (D) says that 3.7 billion is a billion dollars more than the officials had predicted and (E) says that $3.7 billion is a billion dollars more than the officials predicted the gap.

I have two questions:

1. The official explanations says that the option (D) is idiomatically read as elliptical: more than [the amount] they had predicted. This interpretation makes sense in terms of meaning, since we do need to compare an amount with another amount. But, I do not understand why the words "the amount" can be omitted in the second half of the comparison structure, given that it does not show up in the first half of structure? Ellipsis is complicated, but at least many textbooks have agreed that only those elements that appear in the first half of comparison structure can be omitted in the second half, as long as there is no ambiguity in the meaning.


2. The official explanation, when explaining why the option (C) is incorrect, says that either the gap will be more than it was predicted to be or the gap will be more than was predicted would make sense, but the gap will be more then it was predicted does not.

But I do not understand why the second sentence "the gap will be more than was predicted" is correct-- it basically says that the gap will be more than [the gap] was predicted, which is not very clear. I suppose GMATNinja might agree with me? As you pointed out earlier that "they believe the gap will be $3.7 billion, a billion dollars more than [the gap] was predicted just two months ago." does not make sense.


I am not sure whether the official explanation in the SC section is completely reliable--sometimes I find it valuable but other times, it could be puzzling. But since it still represents the official opinion, I hope to discuss the above doubts I have from the official explanations.

I think it is still a good question--the writing in the correct option (D) and "than the gap was predicted to be" could be useful for a writer in the real world to express the idea. I just hope to learn more about the comparison structure. Would appreciate if you could answer my questions when you have time.

I haven't read earlier posts, so I may end up repeating things that were already said. I agree the issue is not pronoun ambiguity.

We can pare this sentence down to essentials. This sentence:

The gap is a billion dollars more than they had predicted.

is fine, as long as the "they" refers to some people (in this question, the "officials") who made a prediction. The officials had predicted a gap, and the actual gap is a billion dollars greater than their prediction. This sentence, on the other hand:

The gap is a billion dollars more than it was predicted.

is not fine. It's missing a verb. "The gap" is the subject of the verb "is" in the first half, and we need to reuse a version of "is" or "to be" in the second half. It might appear the sentence is already doing that, because we do see "was" in the second half of the sentence, but those two verbs aren't aligned. If we change the first "is" to another verb altogether, the problem may become clear:

The pole vaulter cleared twenty feet, two feet more than she was expected.

This sentence isn't right. This sentence only becomes correct if you add a version of "clear" to the second half of the comparison:

The pole vaulter cleared twenty feet, two feet more than she was expected to clear.

Similarly in the sentence

The gap is a billion dollars more than it was predicted.

we need a version of "to be" in the second half that goes with the "is" in the first, so you could correctly say "the gap is a billion dollars more than it was predicted to be", or "the gap is a billion dollars more than it was predicted it would be", but without that extra language the sentence doesn't make sense.

Of course you can also rephrase the sentence as the OA does, which is preferable anyway, because the OA is active instead of passive -- the OA specifies who made the prediction, which seems important here. "The officials predicted a gap" is active, while "a gap was predicted" is passive and conveys less information. So even if one didn't notice the problem with "it" in answer C, there's another reason to prefer answer D.



I don't think you should read the content of official explanations as if it represents 'official opinion'. I remember back when I was doing grad school in math, we'd see jobs advertised to write solutions for test questions that we hadn't written (probably not for the GMAT, but at the time I didn't know what the GMAT was). I'd assume that's where OG solutions come from; they're probably hiring PhD students to write them, because their question designers have other work to do. I see a lot of OG math questions that are clearly designed, from the choice of numbers, so they can be solved in some elegant way, but where the official solution misses the point altogether. The OG math solutions often seem to be written in a pedantic academic way, in a style I'd expect from a math grad student who isn't a GMAT specialist.
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Hello GMATNinja , I am sorry for bothering you, but I've read all the comments and I am still confused. I have several questions and I hope you would kindly help me.

1. You mentioned that we need "TO BE" to make C correct. Similar to "more than it was predicted TO BE", should D be "more than they had predicted TO BE"? Without the "TO BE", D sounds like "they had predicted the budget", which doesn't make sense according your previous comment.

2. I read the gramma book about the comparison. What I learnt is that the second half of a comparison should be parallel with the first half of the comparison, meaning that the structure and form of VERB should be consistent. So I am really confused about the form of comparison in the question. " the gap will be $3.7 billion, a billion dollars more than they had predicted just two months ago". In the first half of the comparison, there is a noun "gap", a verb "be", and number, so I would expect a noun or a pronoun in the second half of the comparison as the object. For example,
"more than [the gap/that] they had predicted just two months ago."
"more than it was predicted to be two months ago."

Initially I thought the noun or pronoun in the second half is omitted, but after I learnt the "omitted words" in the gramma book, I couldn't find the omission of such nouns. I understand the omission of units, verbs or the same clause as long as there is no ambiguity. For example, I run faster than my brother [runs] => no ambiguity; I like apple more than Susan => ambiguous. However, the comparison (or omission) in this question doesn't fall into any of the categories mentioned here. Is there any omission in this problem actually? I could find so many questions related to comparison having "more than that/that of/those ..." in the OA, but why not in this type of comparison?

I read the example you gave in another comment, "Tim picked up one child from day care, one fewer than he should have picked up." I am sorry for being ignorant; I thought it should be "Tim picked up one child from day care, one fewer than the children he should have picked up.", and somehow the "children" is omitted Can you please help me understand the comparison here? Also, do you mind recommending me some videos or articles from which I can learn the type of comparison in this problem?

3. I came up with another question, which I thought is a little bit similar to the comparison in this question.
"Scientists have found signs that moving water changed the chemical makeup of the surface of Mars in recent eras and have therefore concluded that the planet's crust harbors up to three times as much water as [WAS] previously thought." (The OA doesn't have "WAS", but it is in another option)
I am not sure if adding the "WAS" in the second half is wrong, or it is ok to have a "WAS", and Why?

I am sorry again for bringing up so many questions. I think I don't fully understand the comparison. Thanks in advance for your help.

No problem, thanks for the detailed question! This is definitely a tricky one.

The goal of our earlier posts wasn't to show that (C) is WRONG without "to be" and RIGHT with "to be" -- we were simply trying to explain that the meaning of "the budget was predicted" isn't immediately obvious and that, as a result, the meaning of (C) isn't very clear. Deciding between (C) and (D) is more than a simple question of "to be" or not "to be".

Consider the following examples:

• "The price was more than Tim thought." - My guess is that you won't have a hard time figuring out what this means. We have an actual price, and we are trying to compare that actual price to something. But all we get is "Tim thought". Sure, this doesn't explicitly refer to a sum of money, but it's perfectly natural and logical to imagine Tim thinking of some price before finding out the actual price. So it's easy enough to understand that we comparing the actual price to the price that Tim thought of -- a perfectly logical comparison.
• "The price was more than the price was thought." - Okay, so the actual price was more than something -- what was it more than? We have a passive construction ("the price was thought") whose meaning isn't immediately clear. We don't know who was doing the thinking, so, unlike in the previous example, it's hard to imagine what's going on. That doesn't mean that the passive is wrong (something like "the city was attacked" makes perfect sense), but the meaning certainly isn't clear in this example.

Now look at these slightly modified versions of (C) and (D):

• "$3.7 billion is a billion dollars more than [the budget] was predicted." - I guess you can make this work. "$3.7 billion is a billion dollars more than [the amount that] [the budget] was predicted [to be] [by some unknown person(s)]" But that's a whole lot of work to arrive at something that still isn't totally clear (predicted by who?). And we had to assume that "it" referred to "budget" just to arrive at this not-so-great interpretation!
• "$3.7 billion is a billion dollars more than [officials] had predicted" - This is just a lot easier to digest. The officials predicted some amount in the past, and $3.7 billion is a billion more than that amount. (This is a lot like our daycare example from an earlier post).

Is (C) absolutely WRONG because it breaks some black-and-white rules about comparisons, parallelism, or word omissions (a.k.a. "ellipsis")? No. (D) is a better sentence than (C) because the meaning is clearer and easier to follow.

I hope that helps!
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Even with the proposed budget cuts and new taxes and fees, the city's projected deficit for the next budget year is getting worse: administration officials announced that they believe the gap will be $3.7 billion, a billion dollars over what it was predicted just two months ago.

Test: Idiom, SV agreement, and Verb Tenses
A) over what it was predicted
B) over the prediction from
=> wrong idiom

C) more than it was predicted
D) more than they had predicted
-> Correct verb tense
E) more than they predicted it
-> Pronoun error


SC25540.02[/quote]

1. ''a billion dollars more than they had predicted just two months ago''
This phrase is a flexible modifer or absolute phrase becasue it has no main verb. We have a noun+ dependent clause linked with the conjunction 'THAN'.

Is my understanding correct here?



2. option D v/s E

Aren't we clear about the timeline as in which event happened when by the time marker ''2 months ago'' So why are we using past perfect. Simple past in choice E should also be fine?

D) more than they had predicted
E) more than they predicted it

Simple past would work in D. Past perfect works too. Past perfect may not be essential here, but it isn't wrong.

The problem in E is not the tense but the phrasing, more specifically the IT. The IT in E makes E unacceptable.

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