Recently implemented "shift-work equations" based on studies of the hu

Hi sj296,

That's one way to remove the error in option A, but we can't say whether the modified version of option A would then be better than option C (A might still lose to C on issues like meaning clarity and wordiness).

How to ***** is A no parallel ? Seriously, answers like this are killing me.

Recently implemented "shift-work equations" based on studies of the human sleep cycle have reduced sickness, sleeping on the job,fatigue among shift workers, and have raised production efficiency in various industries.

Perfectly parallel

My doubt is ,:

1. While is a dependent clause marker , so where si the caluse after it ?

thought I could arrive at the anwer choic c by implementing the rules of parallelism.

Hi,

I am unclear about the sentence structure in this question.

Recently implemented “shift-work equations” based on studies of the human sleep cycle have reduced sickness, sleeping on the job, fatigue among shift workers, and have raised production efficiency in various industries.

Meaning:
Shift-work equations have been recently implemented. They are based on studies on the human sleep cycle.
According to the question stem they have reduced 3 things:
-sickness
-sleeping on the job
-fatigue among shift workers

And these equations have raised production efficiency

Error Analysis:
1. SV pair is correct: equations-have
2. Verb is in correct tense.
3. Modifiers are properly placed
4. Parallelism : 3 entities which have been reduced have been joined with a "," & "and" coming together- thus the list has some error.

POE:
We need and to correctly connect the list without a comma before it. C and E take care of this. E has redundancy issue hence is rejected.

Thus correct choice is C.

My question is about the "while raising" part. I understand it cannot be parallel with previous list because it brings in a contrast. But what is the structure of "raising" here...? Is raising a verb-ing modifier which modifies the effect of the previous action of reducing 3 items? It can't be a verb of the subject equations because if we look at it like this that equations have done 2 things: reduced and raised? "raising" does not go with that. Thus I got confused in this step and while marking the answer was debating between A and C. What am I not understanding?

Thanks!

Doesn't the comma before the "and" suggest the last item is an Indempendent Clause?

I thought the "and" in the end of a list could not have a comma before it, otherwise it would suggest a new clause would start from there.

But why not D? I thought D put the sentence in parallel construction.
Thank you in advance!

Dear R26, I guess you mean the comma after the word “job”. When I look at the sentence, it seems not to be underlined. However, I don’t think you need to worry about this comma. The equations have reduced three things. The second and third thing must be separated by “and”. Whether there is a comma there or not doesn’t matter. Eliminate A, B and D. As mentioned, “was lowered” in E is redundant. Choose C. Fortunately, the GMAT is not a test of punctuation!

The sentence is in two parallel parts. The first part says "shift-work equations" has 1."reduced sickness", 2. "sleeping on the job",and 3."fatigue.". The second part of the sentence is the result of 1,2, and 3 which is raising production efficiency. Hence raising is the result of these three actions. Hence it should be in " ing " form. The answer therefore cannot be "B" and is "C."

I know it changes the meaning, but would a sentence like this be correct?

Recently implemented "shift-work equations" based on studies of the human sleep cycle have reduced sickness, sleeping on the job, fatigue among shift workers, and production efficiency in various industries.

Honestly I can't understand the rule used to arrive to choice C... There seem to be 10 different opinions and I couldn't see a solid rule that could be applied in all cases (99% of cases)

Can we have a list with, say 10 elements? "I like 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, and 10" ? There is no limit to the number of elements in a list, since they are all parallel, right?

Another one, somebody used this way to see it and this one does make sense to be a solid rule:

Recently implemented "shift-work equations" based on studies of the human sleep cycle have reduced sickness, have reduced sleeping on the job, have reduced fatigue among shift workers, and have reduced have raised production efficiency in various industries. -> Wrong, doesn't make sense, need to change.

Is this way to analyse it correct?

Thank you!

To say that this sentence changes the meaning, would be too mild. This sentence is actually not making any sense. This is suggesting that recently implemented "shift-work equations" have reduced four things:

i) sickness
ii) sleeping on the job,
iii) fatigue among shift workers and
iv) production efficiency

The reason this does not make sense, is because if sickness, sleeping, and fatigue are reduced, there is no reason why production efficiency should also reduce.


Absolutely. In fact, our book EducationAisle Sentence Correction Nirvana discusses the parallelism philosophy through a simplified XYZ deconstruct, its application and examples in significant detail. If someone is interested, PM me your email-id, I can mail the corresponding section.

yes, yes I understand it makes no sense, but for example purposes, imagine that it does make sense for some reason, then the list would be correct? Is there a limit to the number of elements you can list? No, right?..
But it seems that on Gmat they like to use "1,2 and 3"-lists, so 3elements in parallel and then something else happens.

Let's make the example sentence more logical:

Recently implemented "shift-work equations" based on studies of the human sleep cycle have reduced sickness, sleeping on the job, fatigue among shift workers, and labor accidents in various industries. -> would this be correct? Here I don't like the (comma)-And formation, wouldn't it require an Independent clause? I'm a bit confused with this...

And good to know that the XYZ analysis works. Its good to have a checker-rule!

Thank you.

One question. Raising is not parallel with have reduced. I think the correct answer would have been: and fatigue among shift workers while they have raised...

Am I right???

GMATNinja , egmat , VeritasKarishma , MartyMurray

I am finding it difficult to accept C as the answer choice. As per my understanding, "while" is a subordinator and required a bonafide verb which is clearly missing here in option C. Can anybody please help me understand?

AjiteshArun GMATNinja,

I have a questions here.
Need support to eliminate option A. I am not satisfied with mentioned answers.

Hi Harsh2111s,

Let's take a look at the list:

Recently implemented "shift-work equations" based on studies of the human sleep cycle have reduced
(a) sickness,
(b) sleeping on the job,
(c) fatigue among shift workers,
and
(d) have raised production efficiency

The first three are nouns, and make sense with have reduced (have reduced sickness, have reduced sleeping, have reduced fatigue), but after that, we run into a verb phrase (have raised...) instead of a noun, and we end up with have reduced have raised production efficiency as the final element in the list.

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But I think have is used to make things parallel.
Recently implemented "shift-work equations" based on studies of the human sleep cycle have reduced sickness, sleeping......,fatigue.....(have reduced sickness, have reduced sleeping, have reduced fatigue))and

Recently implemented "shift-work equations" based on studies of the human sleep cycle have raised production efficiency.

Need some more input.

Hi Harsh2111s,

That's one way of looking at it, but then we'd really need two lists, which would in turn mean that we'd expect to see two conjunctions in the sentence.

Equations have reduced (X, Y, and Z), and have raised (B).

To see why it'd be much better to include the second conjunction, check if you'd be comfortable with the following sentence:

Equations have reduced X, Y, and have raised B.