In constant dollars, New York City taxpayers spend three times more

"three times as much as they did" is equivalent to "two times more than they did", I believe. So both would be ok grammartically.

Banerjee,

"X times as much as they did" seems like it is a correct usage.

I did a search on this and come up with an article in Fortune that uses four times as much as they did

https://www.fortune.com/fortune/smallbus ... 71,00.html

OA is (E)
What is wrong with (B)? Isn't present perfect OK here?

... times as much as ... must be correct
... times more than ... is wrong as I think

I am talking as if "have" in present perfect
have spent...

It seems that everybody ignores this one. Let me try to get to my point.

Please look at this post.
https://www.gmatclub.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=8252

And this is the link.
https://www.theslot.com/times.html

Let me paste the words.

The problem is that "times [blank]er" and "times more," while very common (the above examples are from my newspaper, The Washington Post), make no sense. Although we may understand the intended meaning, such phrasing confuses addition with multiplication and, at least when taken literally, contains a built-in distortion.

The bottom line:


"Times" goes with "as [blank] as."

Percentages go with "[blank]er" and "more [blank]."
"Times" is a multiplier. Two times one is two times as much as one. Think about how natural it is to say "twice as much as" and keep that in mind even when the numbers get bigger.

"More" signifies addition. It and "[blank]er" usually work best with increases of less than 100 percent: In this state, today's high school students are 25 percent more likely to graduate than students were a decade ago. The governor's education budget is 25 percent higher than last year's allocation.

Percentages can, of course, be used to indicate multiplication, and that is a common convention in references to investments and financial indexes: That birthday present of Microsoft stock appreciated 900 percent by the time he turned 18. To the non-business-page reader, however, it would be clearer to say the stock was worth 10 times as much.

The built-in distortion stems from the literal meaning of "times more." Two hundred is twice as much as 100, but it's one time more. That's easy to see with this example, but when you think about "100 times more" or even "three times more," it's easy to think of such comparisons as synonymous with "100 times as much as" and "three times as much as," even though they literally mean "101 times as much as" and "four times as much as."

In my experience, it's safe to assume that a writer is using the "times more" phrasing erroneously. When you see "100 times more," the intended meaning is "100 times as much as."

A parallel ambiguity leads me to steer clear of "a [blank]fold increase." We hear and read and use
"-fold" all the time, but do we even know what it means? For most of my career, I thought, well, a twofold increase would mean a 200 percent increase. One, plus an increase of two times as many, equals three. But one day it occurred to me: There are no "onefold" increases. "Twofold," as the dictionary says, means twice as much; the "increase" part is a hard-to-avoid redundancy. I thought I had made my peace with "-fold" when I came across a reinforcement of my original belief in "Words Fail Me," by the great Patricia T. O'Conner. So who knows? If she and I can't agree on what "-fold" means, that's an excellent reason to avoid it altogether.

For an even worse distortion than "times more," think about "times less." More examples from my paper:


Student athletes subject to random drug testing at an Oregon high school were almost four times less likely to use drugs than their counterparts at a similar school who were not tested, according to a study by researchers at Oregon Health and Science University.

Mars is very cold and its atmosphere is a very thin blanket -- 100 times less dense than Earth's.

Women who had used HRT drugs for at least a decade were 2.5 times less likely than women who had never used them to develop Alzheimer's.
Repeat after me: One time less equals zero. A number can't decrease more than one time or more than 100 percent. What you see in these examples is the common error of twisting a comparison inside out. If Earth's atmosphere is 100 times as dense as Mars's, Mars's atmosphere is one-one-hundredth as dense as Earth's. It's 1 percent as dense. It's 0.01 times as dense -- not even "one time less dense," let alone the nonsensical "100 times less dense."


Now, how could it be right to use "three times more than" in this case?

"Three times less than" is always wrong.
But "three times more than" can be right. It is equivalent to "four times as much as". Both are correct.

Let's use some math here. Three times A means 3*A. B is three times more than A means B=A+3*A=4*A

Three times "less" A, however, means, B=A-3*A, which would be a negative number, and definitely not what the speaker would have inteneded to convey.

Hi,

I am talking about the use of "times less" here.
I try to point out the issue between

(B) as much as they have

and

(E) more than they did

(B) use present perfect which is consistent with "New York City taxpayers spend three times". Also "as much as" should be fine.

(B) means :
New York City taxpayers spend = 3 x they have spent ten years ago

(C) means :
New York City taxpayers spend = 4 x they have spent ten years ago

My question is : How do we know what the author intended these numbers to be?

No it is not consistent. "New York City taxpayers spend three times" is past tense, instead of present perfect tense.


Yes, it is fine grammatically, although it changed the author's intent.


You go by the original sentence. In the original sentence the author said "three times more", not "three times as much".

"New York City taxpayers spend three times" is in "present tense"
This would be "past tense":
"New York City taxpayers spent three times"

As far as I know, GMAT prefers to have some kind of tense consistency in a sentence. Thus, I don't understand why the first part in in "present tense", then the second part is in "simple past".

I'm sorry, you are right. It IS present tense. It's equivalent to

I love it as much as I did 10 years ago.

present tense for now, past tense for 10 years ago.

I have nothing else to say but just take this OA "as is".
I probably learn that fact that the use of "times more than.." in GMAT is OK.

The only explaination for not using (B) is the perfect tense. Since the action of "spending" was stopped. Past tense is probably more appropriate because perfect tense suggests that they are still spending, but in fact, they are not.

Thanks for this nice discussion, HongHu.

qhoc0010,
you have a very good point, in normal situations as you suggested times as much as holds good.

here author is trying to make a comparison between thing happening now to the one happened in the past.

Choice B means represents an action that started in the past and still continuing. where as choice E makes the right comparison between present and past action.

And this would be correct, I believe:

I'm enjoying this as much as I have enjoyed it in the past ten years.

E is clear.

Sent from my SM-N910H using Tapatalk

Main Issues:

1) Idiom: Comparative words such as "more" should always be used with "than".
2) Comparison: X and Y should be parallel in "X more than Y".
3) Verbs: Should reflect the correct timing.

(A) more than - Wrong: Comparison: Can't compare Y (Noun: 10 years) to X (Clause).
(B) as much as they have - Wrong: Wrong verb. Need "did" instead of "have".
(C) more than they have - Wrong: Wrong verb. Need "did" instead of "have".
(D) more as they did - Wrong: Wrong Idiom "more as".
(E) more than they did - Correct

Hello moderators,
I have a small query here:
What's the difference between:

In constant dollars, New York City taxpayers spend three times more than(they did) ten years ago to receive the same level of municipal services.
AND
In constant dollars, New York City taxpayers spend three times more than they did ten years ago to receive the same level of municipal services.

I knew that if we omit words and meaning is apparent we must choose the option which is more concise. Then how come are we neglecting A?
Could you please help me regarding the correct usage here?

Regards,
Rishav