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Dear winterschool, dear Hatakekakashi, dear GMATNinja, dear egmat, dear community,

I am confused by answer choice B. It uses "who" to modify "statistical outliers". Pretty much anything or anyone can be a statistical outlier. This means that even people can be statistical outliers, however in my opinion statistical outliers can't be a group of people, they can stand for a group of people as in this question but stastical outliers are never people.

I learned the general rule that who can only modify people (never things). Therefore, I thought that answer choice B would be incorrect as "who" is modifying "statistical outliers". I fully understand that the outliers stand for the patients described in the sentence but is that enough so that "who" can be used to modify the outliers?

(Previously I have only seen "who" be used with actual people never for a word which stands for people.)

Thank you very much, kudos to you!
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GMATE1
Dear winterschool, dear Hatakekakashi, dear GMATNinja, dear egmat, dear community,

I am confused by answer choice B. It uses "who" to modify "statistical outliers". Pretty much anything or anyone can be a statistical outlier. This means that even people can be statistical outliers, however in my opinion statistical outliers can't be a group of people, they can stand for a group of people as in this question but stastical outliers are never people.

I learned the general rule that who can only modify people (never things). Therefore, I thought that answer choice B would be incorrect as "who" is modifying "statistical outliers". I fully understand that the outliers stand for the patients described in the sentence but is that enough so that "who" can be used to modify the outliers?

(Previously I have only seen "who" be used with actual people never for a word which stands for people.)

Thank you very much, kudos to you!

Relative pronouns on the GMAT describe the noun or noun phrase immediately before them

so who correctly modifies outliers

are use the Process of Elimination (POE)

we have outliers are

So a,c are eliminated so B,d,e

b makes most coherent sense

I'm no expert but for this question the usage of who in B seems appropriate and there's no other option without errors
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GMATE1
Dear winterschool, dear Hatakekakashi, dear GMATNinja, dear egmat, dear community,

I am confused by answer choice B. It uses "who" to modify "statistical outliers". Pretty much anything or anyone can be a statistical outlier. This means that even people can be statistical outliers, however in my opinion statistical outliers can't be a group of people, they can stand for a group of people as in this question but stastical outliers are never people.

I learned the general rule that who can only modify people (never things). Therefore, I thought that answer choice B would be incorrect as "who" is modifying "statistical outliers". I fully understand that the outliers stand for the patients described in the sentence but is that enough so that "who" can be used to modify the outliers?

(Previously I have only seen "who" be used with actual people never for a word which stands for people.)

Thank you very much, kudos to you!
HiGMATE1
It is most important to extract the meaning from sentence. Please reread the sentence after slash & burn.

Since 2014, Dr. Maine has coordinated a nationwide program to study and aid patients whose affliction with rare, undiagnosed diseases marks them (patients) as statistical outliers which by definition, is interesting, because they are different and therefore there are things to be learned from everybody else.

So who/what are statistical outliners? - Patients....
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Dear Hatakekakashi, dear ramlala,

Quote:
Relative pronouns on the GMAT describe the noun or noun phrase immediately before them
This is true but at the same time we know that they modify different nouns & noun phrases.

For example "which" and "that" never modify people, "who" and "whom" usually modify people and whose can modify both people and things etc.

Quote:
So who/what are statistical outliners? - Patients....
Yes this is what I presume as well, I was just slightly irritated because I had never seen who used with something other people (eventhough outliers here stands for a group of people).

Thank you to both of you! Kudos given ;)
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