Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white sha

according to this book...the OA is E

OA is B. PLease recheck. "THE ONES" in E is ambigious, is it "movies" or "people"???

Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies—less than those killed by bee stings.

A. movies—less than those
B. movies—fewer than have been
C. movies, which is less than those
D. movies, a number lower than the people
E. movies, fewer than the ones

I have studied this question many times.
two points I want to say.
first, "fewer than have been.." in B is adverbial, something that work as adverb to modify the preceding clause. this phrase is not adjective because if it is adjective, we can attach this phrase to "seven people"

only seven people, fewer than have been killed by bee sting, have been killed

this make no sense when the phrase is close the the noun modified.

second point is that " fewer than have been..." has no second element of comparison. this second element is implied. this point is hard for us because in most of the case, both element of comparison are present in the case.

those are two hard points we have to learn from this question.

thank you Mike
why "fewer than..." can not modify "only seven people..." I think the following is correct.

seven persons, fewer than the number of person in my gmat class, have been killed by sharks.

Dear imhimanshu,
I am replying to your pm, and I'm happy to give my 2 cents on this question.

I have looked at various websites, and I am astounded how the web seems almost equally divided between people who insist the OA is (B) and people who insist the OA is (E). If this indeed a GMAT Prep, then either GMAT Prep itself showed inconsistencies, or tons of people mistakenly cite a wrong answer as the OA. Something is very fishy here.

I really liked what pqhai had to say about the dash --- a more emphatic break than a comma or semicolon. It can indicate an unexpected shift in the flow of the sentence.
Ted Williams was a Hall-of-Fame baseball player --- and a champion fisherman.
It can also be used for an appositive phrase or other noun modifier, especially if the modifier is long.
Americans consider Washington the "Father of the Country" --- a title that indicates how much he is endeared to Americans.

In the (B) version of the sentence,
Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies—fewer than have been killed by bee stings.
the dash serves to show an unexpected shift in the logic --- folks are deathly afraid of sharks, and the movies (such as "Jaws") have made notorious death by sharks. The unexpected irony is that little old bees have killed more people than gigantic sharks. The dash indicates this unexpected shift. Notice the good verb parallelism ---- "have been killed by X ... have been killed by Y". What pqhai says about this choice doesn't make sense to me --- it's verb parallelism --- what follows the dash is not a modifier.

Here, I would say both (B) & (E) are correct, grammatically and stylistically. We are dealing with the number of something, i.e. something countable, so we absolutely need the word "fewer" instead of "less." Choices (A) & (C) make the countable/uncountable mistake, so they are plain wrong, and (D) is an awkward wordy disaster. Choice (B) make be a tad shorter and more elegant than (E), but it's not really characteristic of the GMAT to have two answers, both of which are essentially correct: they are usually very good about making one clearly right answer and making something clearly flawed about each of the other four answers. Something is very fishy with this question.

Mike

Dear Mike

in "B" we don't need to THOSE to show the comparison?? —fewer than(THOSE) have been killed?
in all of gmat question it is emphasised!

Q. Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies—less than those killed by bee stings.

a. movies—less than those
b. movies—fewer than have been
c. movies, which is less than those
d. movies, a number lower than the people
e. movies, fewer than the ones

Can someone please explain what's wrong with option E?

Cheers!

Can someone please explain what's wrong with option E?

Cheers!

Hello TaN1213,

I do have a doubt out here. Why do we say if there is comma after movies then it will modify previous noun i.e. movies only.
THere are scenario when verb-ing or verb-ed modifier appears in middle of sentence with comma pair then it stands individually and clause / phrase following this links to main sentence which appears before this comma pair.

Same way why we can't we say this comma pair will stand individually modifying white shark and sentence following this would link with seven people as a comparison.


regards
Abhishek

Source : GMATPrep Default Exam Pack

Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies—less than those killed by bee stings.

(A) movies—less than those

(B) movies—fewer than have been

(C) movies, which is less than those

(D) movies, a number lower than the people

(E) movies, fewer than the ones