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In 1981 children in the United States spent an average of slightly les 28 Feb 2021, 03:17
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shanu1218
By this way, event in 1997 happened first and event in 1981 happened second. By this logic, it is understandable to use past perfect with 1997.
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Hi shanu1218, this is not correct. 1997 did not happen before 1981.

Basically, the crux of Past Perfect is:

Past perfect expresses the scenario that an event happened at some point before another event in the past, or at some point before another time in the past.

Here, the sentence under consideration is:

by 1997 that figure had grown to nearly six hours a week

The event of children in the United States spending nearly six hours a week doing household chores, happened at some point in or before another time (in this case, 1997) in the past. Hence, past perfect (had been) is the appropriate usage here.

So basically, this particular sentence represents the following scenario:

Past perfect is used to depict an event that has happened within some time-frame before another time in the past

Reproducing a similar example given in our book:

Peter started his business in 2012; by 2014, he had established himself well in the business.

Explanation: This sentence is in past perfect (had established). If the sentence was by 2014, Peter had established himself well in the business, the time frame of reference for the event (Peter getting well-established in the business) would basically start in the past (in this case, year 2014) and would continue infinitely into the past. However, the sentence under consideration also states: Peter started his business in 2012. By stating this, the sentence is restricting the time frame that it is referring to in the past (in this case, until year 2012).

You can watch our video on Past Perfect. Especially watch out for Usage -2 explained in the video.

p.s. Our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses this scenario of Past Perfect. Have attached the corresponding section of the book, for your reference.
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In 1981 children in the United States spent an average of slightly les 12 Mar 2021, 22:51
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GMATNinja I could not locate good error pointers in the ACs to test, would you consider eliminating A,C on the basis of meaning (that it's not as clear as B?) or is this a case of correct omission of words? My reasons for eliminating answers from from most confident to least confident.

(D) chores, compared with a figure of nearly six hours a week in 1997
makes it sound like the "children ... doing chores" is compared with "a figure"

(E) chores, that figure growing to nearly six hours a week in 1997
wrongly uses simple present to talk about an action finished in the past

(A) chores; by 1997 they had spent nearly six hours a week
"[children] spent six hours a week" doing what?
(C) chores, whereas nearly six hours a week were spent in 1997
passive voice "were spent" ... by whom? doing what?

(B) chores; by 1997 that figure had grown to nearly six hours a week
"that figure" refers back to the average
"had grown" is correct past perfect form
As a general rule, I wouldn't try to figure out if words in a sentence are missing, because, well, mind-reading is hard. :)

Instead, we simply want to ask ourselves if the given sentence, as written, clearly conveys a logical and unambiguous meaning. For example, If I write, "Tim has more rainbow-colored parakeets than Nancy," it's true that I left out the word "does" at the end of it, but no reasonable person would misinterpret the sentence to mean that Tim has more parakeets than he has Nancy! This sentence is fine.

But if I write, "Tim loves rainbow-colored parakeets more than Nancy," I could be conveying more than one possible meaning: that Tim loves parakeets more than Tim loves Nancy, or that Tim loves parakeets more than Nancy loves parakeets. So this one is a problem.

That said, I think your explanations are mostly dead-on. I'd add that in (E), we have a faulty VERB-ing modification. The figure didn't grow to 6 hours a week as a result of children having spent little time doing household chores in the past. Moreover, it sounds as though the growth from less than 2.5 to 6 took place in entirely in 1997. Compare this to the meaning in (B), that the growth had taken place by 1997, possibly over several years. The latter interpretation is more logical.

And for a more on why (A) is wrong, take a look at my earlier post in this thread.

But you only need one valid reason for eliminating an answer choice, so you did excellent work here.

Nicely done!

Hi GMATNinja EducationAisle

Going by the logic of your example, it would be illogical to compare children with figure. Hence, there is not ambiguity and the usage of "compared with" should be correct as it can only be compared with 2.5 hours/week. The reason it can be wrong is becasue of "IN" 1997.
Kindly confirm.
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First, take a look at a couple examples of "compared with" from other official SC answers:


Both of these sentences involve a description that only makes sense when one thing is compared with another. But that's not the case here:

Quote:
"In 1981, children in the United States spent an average of slightly less than two and a half hours a week doing household chores."
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This statement makes perfect sense on its own. The fact that the children spent less than 2.5 hrs/wk doing chores in 1981 doesn't depend or rely on a comparison to some other figure. So the use of "compared with" doesn't actually make much sense here. If that's not clear, consider these simpler examples:

  • "Compared to LeBron, Tim doesn't make a lot of money." - This makes sense because whether Tim makes a lot of money is relative -- relative to a paper boy, Tim might make a lot. But relative to LeBron, Tim does not make a lot.
  • "Tim makes $50,000 per year, compared with LeBron's salary of $40 million." - This one doesn't make sense. The amount of money Tim makes is NOT relative -- it doesn't matter whether we're comparing his salary to LeBron's salary or to Timmy Jr.'s earnings as a paper boy. Either way, Tim makes $50,000 per year.

So that's one vote against (D). Another is the use of "a figure" (as opposed to "that figure" in choice B). The use of "that" makes it more clear that we are talking about the same kind of figure (the average amount of time that children in the US spent doing household chores in a given year).

Lastly, even though it is of course illogical to compare "children" to "figure," the structure of (D) makes it easy for the reader to think, at first glance, that we are comparing what the children did to what the figure did. Can we figure out the intended meaning? Sure. But the structure doesn't lend itself to the logical meaning, making it less than ideal.

No smoking guns here, but we have plenty of reasons to pick (B) over (D).

I hope that helps!
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In 1981 children in the United States spent an average of slightly less than two and a half hours a week doing household chores; by 1997 they had spent nearly six hours a week.


(A) chores; by 1997 they had spent nearly six hours a week

(B) chores; by 1997 that figure had grown to nearly six hours a week

(C) chores, whereas nearly six hours a week were spent in 1997

(D) chores, compared with a figure of nearly six hours a week in 1997

(E) chores, that figure growing to nearly six hours a week in 1997


Show Spoiler
https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/11/us/children-study-longer-and-play-less-a-report-says.html

Children age 3 to 11 years of age spent on average four hours a day in preschool or school in the early 1980's and now spend an average of six hours a day in preschool or school. The 1981 study reported that children spent an average of slightly less than two and a half hours a week doing household chores. By 1997, the year the field research was conducted, that figure had grown to nearly six hours a week.
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I can't convince myself that option B is better than option A. "By 1997, they had spent nearly six hours a week" actually has some issues that there is no starting point, maybe combined average of 1950s and 1980s made figure to six hours a week. I can't properly eliminate it. please help. IanStewart DmitryFarber ChrisLele
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In 1981 children in the United States spent an average of slightly less than two and a half hours a week doing household chores; by 1997 they had spent nearly six hours a week.

(A) chores; by 1997 they had spent nearly six hours a week

(B) chores; by 1997 that figure had grown to nearly six hours a week

I can't convince myself that option B is better than option A. "By 1997, they had spent nearly six hours a week" actually has some issues that there is no starting point, maybe combined average of 1950s and 1980s made figure to six hours a week. I can't properly eliminate it. please help.
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The beginning of the sentence talks about what happened "In 1981". The sentence is comparing the average in one year to the average in another. So the figure cited later in the sentence is the average for the year 1997, and not the average for some long period of time ending in 1997. There are other problems with A - the "they" refers back to the children from 1981, so it sounds like the second half of answer A is talking about how much time the same people spent on chores when they were 16 years older. It's also not clear what "they had spent six hours a week" means -- doing what? The sentence is supposed to compare one average with another. Answer A doesn't do that (it doesn't even say that the "six hours" is an average). And (probably the most obvious issue) there is no justification for using the past perfect tense in A.

Answer B resolves all of those issues.
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It looks like a few folks have knocked out A above, but I'll give you another angle. Imagine that I said "By midnight, I had driven 90 miles an hour." The past perfect tense indicates that this action was completed sometime before midnight, but what does it mean to complete driving at some rate? It seems much more likely that the author wants to say "By midnight, I was driving 90 miles an hour." This means that when midnight arrived, I was going at that speed. However, I could also use the form in B of the original q and say "I had increased my speed to 90 mph" or "my speed had increased to 90 mph." Now the completed action is the increase, but the speed is still 90 mph at midnight.

Going back to kids' chores, A) is saying that kids had worked at this particular rate at some unspecified time between 1981 and 1997. That would be a very strange and narrow statement to make.
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It looks like a few folks have knocked out A above, but I'll give you another angle. Imagine that I said "By midnight, I had driven 90 miles an hour." The past perfect tense indicates that this action was completed sometime before midnight, but what does it mean to complete driving at some rate? It seems much more likely that the author wants to say "By midnight, I was driving 90 miles an hour." This means that when midnight arrived, I was going at that speed. However, I could also use the form in B of the original q and say "I had increased my speed to 90 mph" or "my speed had increased to 90 mph." Now the completed action is the increase, but the speed is still 90 mph at midnight.

Going back to kids' chores, A) is saying that kids had worked at this particular rate at some unspecified time between 1981 and 1997. That would be a very strange and narrow statement to make.
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Thank you for clearing the doubt, I guess now I have a much better understanding. Also, as others have pointed out, do we really need to specify what had done spending nearly six hours a week. I though it was pretty clear what the sentence meant and there was no ambiguity. can you help with it?
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In 1981 children in the United States spent an average of slightly less than two and a half hours a week doing household chores; by 1997 they had spent nearly six hours a week.

(A) chores; by 1997 they had spent nearly six hours a week

(B) chores; by 1997 that figure had grown to nearly six hours a week

I can't convince myself that option B is better than option A. "By 1997, they had spent nearly six hours a week" actually has some issues that there is no starting point, maybe combined average of 1950s and 1980s made figure to six hours a week. I can't properly eliminate it. please help.

The beginning of the sentence talks about what happened "In 1981". The sentence is comparing the average in one year to the average in another. So the figure cited later in the sentence is the average for the year 1997, and not the average for some long period of time ending in 1997. There are other problems with A - the "they" refers back to the children from 1981, so it sounds like the second half of answer A is talking about how much time the same people spent on chores when they were 16 years older. It's also not clear what "they had spent six hours a week" means -- doing what? The sentence is supposed to compare one average with another. Answer A doesn't do that (it doesn't even say that the "six hours" is an average). And (probably the most obvious issue) there is no justification for using the past perfect tense in A.

Answer B resolves all of those issues.
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Thanks for your reply. I understood your explanation but had one doubt. I didn't understand ""It's also not clear what "they had spent six hours a week" means -- doing what? "" like I found it pretty clear that what they spent their time on. Can you please clear this a bit more?
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I see a lot of explanations for A vs B, and I totally buy those. But I have a query here.
"that figure" in option B logically refers to "the average no of hours spent doing household chores", but I thought the noun phrase didn't have an antecedent and went with Option C.
Can experts please explain if we can make such logical inferences for such Nouns ?
Also, can someone please explain what is wrong with Option C ?

I don't see anything wrong with Option C
In 1981 children in the United States spent an average of slightly less than two and a half hours a week doing household chores, whereas nearly six hours a week were spent(doing household chores) in 1997(by children in United States)

Am I missing something here in C?
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We only want to switch from active to passive voice (or vice versa) when there's a reason to do so. Choice C just arbitrarily shifts, and this shift doesn't do anything to make the sentence clearer or easier to read. Additionally, the first part of the comparison is about an average number of hours per week, but C drops that in the second half. If we were to read it completely literally, it would be saying that the TOTAL hours of all children added up to 6 hrs/wk. Sure, this isn't the intended meaning, but the correct answers makes sure to maintain the parallelism of the comparison by comparing one statistic to another comparable statistic.
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Gokul20

We only want to switch from active to passive voice (or vice versa) when there's a reason to do so. Choice C just arbitrarily shifts, and this shift doesn't do anything to make the sentence clearer or easier to read. Additionally, the first part of the comparison is about an average number of hours per week, but C drops that in the second half. If we were to read it completely literally, it would be saying that the TOTAL hours of all children added up to 6 hrs/wk. Sure, this isn't the intended meaning, but the correct answers makes sure to maintain the parallelism of the comparison by comparing one statistic to another comparable statistic.
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Thank you Dmitry. This explanation makes sense to me now.
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[quote="humtum0"]In 1981 children in the United States spent an average of slightly less than two and a half hours a week doing household chores; by 1997 they had spent nearly six hours a week.


(A) chores; by 1997 they had spent nearly six hours a week

(B) chores; by 1997 that figure had grown to nearly six hours a week

(C) chores, whereas nearly six hours a week were spent in 1997

(D) chores, compared with a figure of nearly six hours a week in 1997

(E) chores, that figure growing to nearly six hours a week in 1997

regarding choice B
"by 1997, that figure had grown" is correct. at 1997, the growing finished. past perfect is correct.
regarding choice A
" by 1997, they had spent nearly sic hours a week" is unclear in meaning. this is not correct ellipsis. we need to add "doing so" . "doing so" is correct ellipsis. "by 1997, they had spent nearly sic hours a week, doing so"

similarly, choice C is unclear in meaning. "six hours a week were spent" is unclear. what six hours
similarly,choice D is unclear in meaning. what is "a figure of six hours".

choice B is clear in meaning. "that figure" refer to the previous figure and ,so, is clear.
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sayantanc2k AjiteshArun EducationAisle

Can we eliminate options C, D, and E on following points? please correct if there is any error.

option C- 1. we do not get any clearer meaning by clause nearly six hours a week were spent in 1997 to what is referring to clause either children in united states or somewhere else
2 . this option is inferior to option B

option D- here, children in united state are compared with the figure, comparison error.

option E- honestly i had difficulty in eliminating this option. but then i looked at comma that so we need that without comma to make more sense.

Thanks in advance
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humtum0
In 1981 children in the United States spent an average of slightly less than two and a half hours a week doing household chores; by 1997 they had spent nearly six hours a week.

(A) chores; by 1997 they had spent nearly six hours a week

(B) chores; by 1997 that figure had grown to nearly six hours a week

I can't convince myself that option B is better than option A. "By 1997, they had spent nearly six hours a week" actually has some issues that there is no starting point, maybe combined average of 1950s and 1980s made figure to six hours a week. I can't properly eliminate it. please help.

The beginning of the sentence talks about what happened "In 1981". The sentence is comparing the average in one year to the average in another. So the figure cited later in the sentence is the average for the year 1997, and not the average for some long period of time ending in 1997. There are other problems with A - the "they" refers back to the children from 1981, so it sounds like the second half of answer A is talking about how much time the same people spent on chores when they were 16 years older. It's also not clear what "they had spent six hours a week" means -- doing what? The sentence is supposed to compare one average with another. Answer A doesn't do that (it doesn't even say that the "six hours" is an average). And (probably the most obvious issue) there is no justification for using the past perfect tense in A.

Answer B resolves all of those issues.
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thank you , your explanation is wonderful.

I make it more clear.

In 1981 children in the United States spent an average of slightly less than two and a half hours a week doing household chores; by 1997 they had spent nearly six hours a week.


(A) chores; by 1997 they had spent nearly six hours a week

(B) chores; by 1997 that figure had grown to nearly six hours a week

(C) chores, whereas nearly six hours a week were spent in 1997

(D) chores, compared with a figure of nearly six hours a week in 1997

(E) chores, that figure growing to nearly six hours a week in 1997

we refer to a noun by using pronoun such as "they" or article such as "a". "they " in choice a is wrong. "a" in choice D is wrong. in choice a, they spend six hours doing what. this is unclear. in choice c, six hours are spent doing what. in choice d, a figur of nearly six hours for what. these choices suffer unclear meaning error.
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B. chores; by 1997 that figure had grown to nearly six hours a week
In B how is 'had grown' past perfect correct ? that ?
C. chores, whereas nearly six hours a week were spent in 1997
Why is C incorrect ?
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Dhwanii
B. chores; by 1997 that figure had grown to nearly six hours a week
In B how is 'had grown' past perfect correct ?
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Hi Dhwanii, you might want to go thru this post.
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Why is that figure correct in option B but not in option e ?
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Why is that figure correct in option B but not in option e ?
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Hello bhavyasetia,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, the use of "that figure" is not incorrect in Option E; Option E alters the meaning of the sentence through the phrase "in 1997"; the use of "in" incorrectly implies that the amount of time that the average child spent on chores grew to six hours a week during 1997; the intended meaning is that the amount of time that the average child spent on chores had grown to six hours a week, by the time 1997 began.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
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KVISHUINFO
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In 1981 children in the United States spent an average of slightly les 22 Aug 2022, 20:28
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I don't like this question. 2nd clause is not an independent clause. Therfore B cannot be considered correct.

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In 1981 children in the United States spent an average of slightly les 26 Sep 2022, 09:26
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Hi GMATNinja, by your logic of "compared with", I believed, "Today, more than 43 percent of Californians under the age of eighteen are Hispanic, compared
with about 35 percent a decade ago" (gmat sc answer choice), compared with should be wrong in this sentence as the comparison is not relative. Can you pls help me understand this better.
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In 1981 children in the United States spent an average of slightly les 28 Sep 2022, 01:03
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KVISHUINFO

The second part of B is in fact an independent clause. It starts with a modifier, but it doesn't have the type of subordinating language ("while, since, because, although") that make a clause dependent. The main clause is simply "That figure had grown." The fact that this relies for its meaning on the first part does not make the clause dependent. If that were how things worked, the sentence I'm typing now wouldn't be a sentence at all, since "that" refers back to the sentence prior.
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