While it costs about the same to run nuclear plants as other types of

can someone explain why C is wrong

the book said A uses emphatic construction. Does anyone know when to use this construction the book was not clear.

Dear kedusei,
For option (C), look at my post from February 3, 2014, immediately above your post. Let me know if anything there is not clear.

For emphatic construction, see this post:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/gmat-idiom ... ed-idioms/

Mike

Hi Payal,

I have a question regarding 3rd statement.

If your 3rd statement changed to below by inserting 'OF' after that then it would be right?
The incidence of the disease among men exceeds that of among women.

Regards,
Chetan

Dear Chetan,
We definitely don't need two prepositions in a row.
... that of women. (correct)
... that among women. (correct)
... that of among women. (a disaster)
Does this make sense?

Dear vietmoi999

(B) While the cost of running nuclear plants is about the same as it is for other types of power plants
This is perfectly correct. A perfect comparison. This, of course, is the OA.

(C) Even though it costs about the same to run nuclear plants as for it costs to run other types of power plants
This one has the same structure, but because what comes before is different, the structure is problematic here. The preposition "for" is not needed here. A different set of words would be implied.

(D) It costs about the same to run nuclear plants as for it costs to run other types of power plants
Same problem as (C).

Incidentally, the GMAT loves this trick --- one correct option with (Structure A)(Structure B), and then other incorrect choices with (Structure C)(Structure B), ---- even though (Structure B) would be correct on its own, it works only with (Structure A) and not with (Structure C). They love this pattern.

Does this make sense?
Mike

Hello Mike, can you let me what "that" would refer to in this sentence.

Is my following understanding correct:

..that among women.

"that" refers to "incidence of disease".

..that of women.

"that" refers to "incidence". I somehow am not getting convinced about this. Because this could either mean:
(A) incidence of women
(B) incidence of (disease among) women

Can you explain; would help us understand better.

Dear saumya12,
I'm happy to respond.

Here's egmat's original sentence:
The incidence of the disease among men exceeds that among women.
Perfectly correct. Now, think about the parallelism. Think if we didn't abbreviate with the word "that":
The incidence of the disease among men exceeds the incidence of the disease among women.
Of course, that version is very wordy and never would be correct on the GMAT, but it makes clear the nature of the parallelism. Men are parallel to women in this sentence. No one is talking about the incidence of men. It's all about the "incidence of the disease among men."

Notice that, in the structure "that among women," whatever the "that" represents must be followed by the word "among."
incidence among women = incidence of what??? This is not the same as "incidence of women"
incidence of among women = wrong
incidence of the disease among women = correct

Does this make sense?
Mike

Dear vietmoi999
In the OA:
While the cost of running nuclear plants is about the same as for other types of power plants, ...
This comparison actually involves perfect parallelism and perfect logic. It is an idiomatic construction, but it is 100% correct on all counts.
Mike

D is, i guess, wrong because it uses 'to run' along with 'as for'.
i mean take B, "cost of running nuclear plants is about the same as for" is the correct usage.

Dear rishi081992
I'm happy to respond.

Choice (D) has multiple problems. Here it is:
(D) It costs about the same to run nuclear plants as for other types of power plants, whereas the electricity they generate is more expensive, stemming from the fixed costs of building nuclear plants.
I would say the first part, before the first comma, is more-or-less correct. It may be a little awkward, but there is nothing unambiguously incorrect about that first part.
One problem is ambiguous pronoun "they" --- to whom does this refer? The "nuclear plants" or the "other types of power plants"? That is a major logical flaw.
The whole arrangement of the second half of the sentence has a choppy awkward feel to it. Among other things, the putative cause of the increased expense, the building costs, is illogically relegated to a parenthetical structure, and is not part of a direct & powerful statement of cause & effect.
Overall, choice (D) is just a poor way to phrase the information, and (B) is much more powerful & clear & direct.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Hey Mike,

Could we solve this question ONLY by using S-V agreement and pronoun ambiguity?

A) Violates S-V
C) Violates S-V
D) "they" is ambiguous: 'other types of power plants' is closer.
E) "they" is ambiguous: 'other types of power plants' is closer

B) S-V agreement is met; 'they' is now closer to the 'nuclear power plants' and actually 'nuclear plants' has been repeated in the second part of the sentence, and only after this repetition the 'they' pronoun appears. In contrast, in D and E, 'they' appears before the second repetition of the nuclear plants in the sentence.

Dear apolo,
I'm happy to respond.

My friend, the "ONLY" approach is not the most productive approach to studying GMAT SC. When you are studying these sentences, your job is to understand, in depth, everything wrong with each wrong answer choice. Any approach which allows you to jump to a "done with that" perspective on a question cuts short deeper kinds of understanding.

Having said that, SVA certainly is one good reason to reject both (A) & (C). The pronoun usage in (D) &(E) are problematic, but not too different from what might be acceptable. It's very important to understand not merely the grammatical issues, but the rhetorical issues: the logical flow of the sentence, the power of phrasing things a certain way, what sounds clear vs. awkward, etc. Rhetorical Construction is one of the eight major areas tested on the GMAT SC. For more on this, see:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/rhetorical ... orrection/

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Thanks Mike.
My question did not mean that we should only restrict ourselves to purely grammatical rules.
Actually I asked this question to know whether using pronoun ambiguity is a safe tool for eliminating some choices in the case of this question; that turned out to be: not! (as you have explained in the bold part of your answer).
I know from MGMAT that generally slight pronoun ambiguity might be tolerated, and even some of the published questions in OG have some slight pronoun ambiguity in their correct answer choices.
However, for me it was interesting that the right choice in this questions ALSO has the least problematic usage of the pronoun 'they' compared to answer choices E and D. So I was just curious to know whether this has happened intentionally or simply accidentally.

In contrast to S-V agreement, for example, pronoun ambiguity in some cases, like the one in this question, seems not to be a pretty suitable reason used for eliminating a choice.

Dear apolo,
My friend, I will say SVA is one of the few areas of grammar that is almost mathematical in its sharp right/wrong distinction.
The company is . . . correct
The company are . . . incorrect
With pronouns, mistake of number are similarly black/white:
The store opened in June, and by July it was successful. = correct
The store opened in June, and by July they were successful. = incorrect
For number mistakes in pronoun, we can be just as certain in rejecting answers as we are with SVA mistakes.

The multiple pronoun thing, the same pronoun for two different things, is also a big no-no:
When anthropologist first encountered, they were surprised by their mode of dress.
Who was surprised by who? This is also a wrong-100%-of-the-time kind of error. See:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/gmat-pronoun-traps/

As for antecedent, which noun is the antecedent, then we get into shades of gray. This involves issues of rhetoric and style, not just pure mathematical word order. Parallelism and logical focus of the sentence can sway issues of pronoun-antecedent pairings.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Thanks Mike.
For the second case that you have mentioned, let me show an example from Verbal review, SC problem #92:

Schistosomiasis, a disease caused by a parasitic worm, is prevalent in hot, humid climates, and it has become more widespread as irrigation projects have enlarged the habitat of the freshwater snails that are the parasite’s hosts for part of its life cycle.

(the original sentence is correct)

According to Manhattan SC book, every 'it and its' and every 'they, them, their' must refer to the same antecedent in a sentence.

However, in this sentence 'it' refers to the disease and 'its' refers to 'parasite'.
Of course they explained this contradiction by saying that we have two clauses, and that rules is about clauses not sentences: kind of weird, because in their book they have not clearly mentioned this. Also here (after 'and') indeed we have a complex sentence made of a main clause and a subordinate clause ...

Dear apolo
My friend, I think you misunderstand the sense of that rule. Yes, it's absolutely true, as MGMAT says, that it's a big no-no to have the same pronoun referring to two different things in the same part of the sentence.
. . . they would not sell them the rights . . .
. . . it prevented it from . . .
Think of it this way: every clause within sentence is a mini-sentence in itself. Similarly, participial & infinitive & gerund phrases revolve around a verb-form, exactly as a clause revolves around a verb. Each one is a kind of mini-sentence within the whole. Using the same pronoun inside the same mini-sentence for two different things is a huge no-no. By contrast, if in one part of the sentence, I have [antecedent #1] . . "its," and then later, in another part, I have [antecedent #2] . . . "it," that's perfectly fine. How close is too close? When are two of the same pronoun far enough away that no ambiguity arises? To some extent, this is a judgment call, but certainly when they only a few words apart in the same phrase or clause, that's a problem.

In that sentence from the OG Verbal Review,
Schistosomiasis, a disease caused by a parasitic worm, is prevalent in hot, humid climates, and it has become . . .
The main sentence structure involves two parallel independent clauses. The first "it" is the subject of the second independent clause, parallel to the subject of the first. This parallelism, as well as the rhetorical focus of the sentence on schistosomiasis, make it unambiguously clear that this "it" should refer to schistosomiasis.

Then, later in the sentence, we have a that-clause, a relative clause that modifies the noun "freshwater snails."
. . . freshwater snails that are the parasite’s hosts for part of its life cycle.
In that region of the sentence, that mini-sentence zone, the only singular noun is "parasite," because the snails are plural. Normally, a noun in the possessive cannot be an antecedent, but it can be if the pronoun is also in the possessive, as it is here. This is a dependent clause. Think about if we made this information a sentence on its own:
Freshwater snails are the parasite’s hosts for part of its life cycle.
That's a perfectly clear sentence. The pronoun usage in that sentence is completely unambiguous. That's precisely why we can turn the sentence back into the clause, stick it in the larger sentence, and the pronoun usage is still clear. The two "it" usages are "far away" from each other, doing very different things in very different parts of the sentence, and each one has its own strong relationship with its own antecedent.

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Hi can some one please explain the ellipsis of the same...as? I just got more confused after reading those posts...
(A) The cost of running nuclear plants is about the same as the cost of running other types of power plants.
(B) It costs about the same to run nuclear plants as it costs to run other types of power plants.
Also, why is the sentence "the incidence of the disease among men exceeds among women" ambiguious? Some one explained it in the post but I still dont get it. Thanks~

Dear phemiaYu,
I'm happy to respond. I think one of thing that is potentially confusing is the fact that common words have been dropped in the second branch of the parallelism. See this blog article:
Dropping Common Words in Parallel

Let's start with your two sentences
(1a) The cost of running nuclear plants is about the same as the cost of running other types of power plants. = wordy but OK
(1b) The cost of running nuclear plants is about the same as that of running other types of power plants. = not much better
Because of the phrasing, it's not immediately obvious how to omit repeated words to shorten this more without introducing ambiguity or awkwardness. This is not a structure that lends itself to elegant revisions.

(2a) It costs about the same to run nuclear plants as it costs to run other types of power plants. = correct but too wordy
(2b) It costs about the same to run nuclear plants as to run other types of power plants. = better, with the common words "to run" dropped in the second branch.
(2c) It costs about the same to run nuclear plants as for other types of power plants. = even more elegant: this is what the GMAT loves!

Now, look at the structure in the OA:
(3a) "... the cost of running nuclear plants is about the same as the cost of running other types of power plants ..." = that's the full version. That's grammatically correct but a rhetorical disaster! It reeks of redundancy! We need to drop some of the repeated words.
(3b) "... the cost of running nuclear plants is about the same as that of running other types of power plants ..." = only slightly better
(3b) "... the cost of running nuclear plants is about the same as for other types of power plants ..." = an elegant gem! Again, this is what the GMAT loves, and this is the version in the OA.

The very hard thing about this is that when we look at parallelism of a complex structure, it is up to us, the readers, to infer which repeated elements from the first branch have been omitted in the second branch. We get (2c) or (3c) printed on the page and we have to understand that everything in (2a) or (3a) is implicit in that.

Does all this make sense?
Mike