Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1 percent in August, intensifying expectatio

The answer is of course option B. But, I have a doubt and need some expert comments on that.

I eliminated options C, D, and E on the following basis:

...expectations of personal spending...

It's like the personal spending has expectations and those expectations have been intensified. This construction seemed to me quite awkward and I thus eliminated the options. But the official explanation -- (D) Although this option is not technically wrong, it is less clear and graceful than (B) -- doesn't find anything wrong with the construction.

I agree with you. I read somewhere that the explanations in OG are not written by the same experts who write the questions. These experts who write the explanations are not as highly talented as the ones who write the questions. However I cannot confirm the authenticity of this information.

Here is the OE from OG 2015:



GMATNinja: Why did OG say that option D isn't technically wrong?

Wow, that's a really interesting official explanation. It pains me to say this, but those explanations are often complete garbage. Often, the questions themselves are written years -- or even decades -- before they're ultimately retired and end up in an OG. So whoever writes the explanations likely has no contact with the people who created the question in the first place. I'm not even sure that the explanation-writers are GMAC employees -- it's possible that they're contracted by Wiley, the publisher, not GMAC.

Anyway... in this case, I completely disagree with the explanation for (D). I don't think there's any justification whatsoever for the use of "that of" here, but maybe I'm missing something.

Yeah, it's disappointing that the official explanations aren't more consistent. But in the GMAT's defense, it would be nearly impossible to match up the explanations with the original intent of the question, since so much time passes between writing the question and publishing the books that contain those questions. And the GMAT's job is to write a fair and valid test -- so we're lucky that they help us to prepare for their test at all!

Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1 percent in August, intensifying expectations that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of the 1.4 percent growth rate in personal spending for the previous quarter.
A. that personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubled that of- pronoun that(second one) refers to personal spending and leads to an illogical meaning

B. that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double- Correct

C. of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it more than doubled- pronoun issue 'that it'

D. of personal spending in the July-September quarter more than doubling that of- same pronoun issue as A

E. of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it would more than double that of - same pronoun issue as A

1. 'intensifying expectations that personal spending' vs ' intensifying expectations of personal spending'-- Is 'intensifying expectations that personal spending' better than the latter? Can it be used as a decision point?

2. In option C,
Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1 percent in August, intensifying expectations of personal spending in the July-September quarter, that it more than doubled--

In this option C, verb-ing modifier 'intensifying expectations of personal spending in the July-September quarter' modifies the preceding clause and makes sense with the action of preceding clause 'rose'. But does it make sense with the subject 'retail sales'?

3. Also, in option C,
It the usage of 'that' to introduce a subordinate clause correct here? ( We remove the part separated by commas to give our core sentence as following)
Retail sales rose 8/10 of 1 percent in August that it more than doubled

AjiteshArun , GMATNinja , MagooshExpert , GMATGuruNY , VeritasPrepBrian , MartyTargetTestPrep , DmitryFarber , VeritasKarishma , generis , other experts - please enlighten

Yes.


Yes it does make sense; however, you should not really be worried about this aspect in this question, since the entire participial phrase is in the non-underlined portion of the sentence. Hence, all options inherit the same structure.


More importantly, one would not normally expect to see a comma before that.

Hi souvik101990 generis
I have a query with respect to the use of tense...
If option B would have been as follows, would it be still incorrect?

that personal spending in the July-September quarter will more than double

My reason: Since the sentence talks from the past perspective that is represented by the verb ROSE, WOULD is correct that WILL?
Please correct me if I am wrong.

Sometimes with the word EXPECTATIONS...WILL can also be correct but that depends upon the context of the sentence and tense used in the sentence.

I would like to know whether the first 'that' is a modifier or is a subordinate clause ?

GMAT ninja has mentioned that The first "that" is pretty harmless, and just modifies “expectations.”

But what follows the 'that' is a complete clause which makes me wonder if it is a subordinate clause. Is it ok for a modifier to have a complete clause ?

The below examples show 'that' being used as a modifier. What follows that is just the verb phrase not the complete clause.
Ex 1: The first-class airline tickets to Antarctica that were purchased using Amber’s retirement savings were worth every penny.
Ex 2 : The son of a gun that burned my dinner deserves to be punished.


GMATNinja VeritasKarishma

Dear IanStewart AjiteshArun MartyTargetTestPrep GMATGuruNY AnthonyRitz VeritasPrepBrian ccooley DmitryFarber GMATNinja GMATNinjaTwo,

Although I got it correct by POE, I have 2 questions on the correct choice B.

Q1. Why is comparison in choice B. correct?
How can SPENDING (which is supposed to be a number double) a RATE?
Shouldn't it be that the RATE of personal spending in July-Sept double the RATE of personal spending in previous quarter?

Q2. Is it possible for a present value to double a past value?
How can a past value (the growth rate of a previous quarter) be changed or double?

Side note: The issue in Q2 is the reason why choice A. is wrong in this OG question: https://gmatclub.com/forum/a-1972-agree ... 52000.html

I have a question with C. How did you determine that 'that' in C is being used as a noun modifier ? Could it not have been an article ? If I determine that it's an article, where am I wrong?

Hey guys, QQ;

(B) that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double

even though I marked B as my answer (took 2.20 as I had eliminated this option earlier and Kinda came back to it since the rest were just plain BAD). I am not convinced with B. how come personal spending's || to 1.4% growth rate.

intensifying expectations that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double the growth rate of 1.4%. How come we're okay with this? personal spending and growth rate, as an entity, are not the same.

Hi ueh55406, good question. Here than is not the classical "than" (in the sense that than does not really serve as a comparison indicator here).

Let's take a similar example:

The recent trend of extremely high birth rate in country X will more than double country X's population in the next few years.

This means that birth rate in country X has recently been so high that country X's population will increase by " > 2" factor, in the next few years.

Similarly here:

Retail sales have been so high in August that growth rate in personal spending in the July-September quarter will be > 2.8%.

Hi GMATNinja
Just wanted to clarify, expectations 'that' - is this a correct idiom that is used on the GMAT ? could the answer choices C, D and E be eliminated based on the this incorrect idiom usage ?

Hi,

I have a problem with the noun modifier "that" in "that personal spending in the July-September quarter would more than double". Here, the "that" is a relative pronoun, which acts as the subject the following clause. I assumed after "that" as a relative pronoun only "verb" is allowed, however, here we introduce the new subject of "personal spending".

Could anyone please explain the usage of verb "doulbe" here?
Is the idea trying to say “personal spending doubled the growth rate, which was 1.4 percentage before”？

It was expected that spending would more than double. Only B says so....