With a total population of less than two hundred and fewer breeding females than ever before, the American crocodile seemed a decade ago to be in danger of disappearing.


(A) of less than two hundred and fewer

(B) lower than two hundred and less

(C) lesser than two hundred and fewer

(D) fewer than two hundred and less

(E) of fewer than two hundred and of fewer


(43/6)

Just a quick caution here. Choosing one phrase over another because it is used more often can be extremely dangerous. For example:

"I like to travel to places like the beach." --> This implies that I don't actually like going to the beach, but that I like going to places SIMILAR to the beach. (Maybe a water park or a sandbox or something).

"I like to travel to places such as the beach." --> This means I like going to the beach, but we rarely say it this way in everyday speech.

With that said, I'd push people to not just consider the single word used in this and other questions (less vs. lesser) but the phrase overall ("of less than" vs. "lesser than) and try to determine why one of these is right and the other is wrong.
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With due respects to Bkimball's views, which he is entitled for, just as I am for my own views which I cherish, let me make out a few things. I think that this forum is neither for teaching nor for exploring English grammar. This is for teaching enough grammar to cross over the GMAT. Within that pressure cooker time of the real-time GMAT, the test taker must know the shortest but the safest means ticking the right ones. Knowledge of grammar is subservient to this purpose.

But let me reiterate that I respect other views too.
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daagh,

I completely understand what you're saying and didn't intend for this to be a purely theoretical discussion of grammar. That said, I have spent a lot of time taking, teaching, and reviewing the GMAT and I believe that you need to understand certain fundamental grammatical concepts to do well on SC. Although there are rules that get shared on many forums ("Being is always wrong" / "The shortest answer is always right" / etc.) the reality is that the only real hard and fast rule on SC is that "The right answer must be grammatically correct." Although students can probably increase their scores to a certain point using shortcuts, most of the comments I see on this forum are from students who say their goal scores are 650-750. For better or for worse, that's why I often post about the grammar behind SC questions.

Brett
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Hi Dolly,

When an uncountable noun decreases we use "less" and when the noun is countable we use "fewer". Specifically when the number is also given its definitely a countable. And well-trained soldiers can be any number in the population hence it can be taken as uncountable.

However as per the OA "less" is used for the decrease in the number. I am not sure of how this works.

Regards,
Dom.

You are right that "When an uncountable noun decreases we use "less" and when the noun is countable we use "fewer". "

Here are some examples:

Countable: fewer cars/ dollars/ bottles
Uncountable: less traffic/ amount of money/ water

Note: In all these cases fewer/ less are adjectives (placed next to the noun without "than").

Let's take an example:

I bought less pens than my friend did . - incorrect
I bought fewer pens than my friend did. correct

Just as "pens", "soldiers" is a countable noun (1 soldier, 2 soldiers...) and thus, "fewer" is used correctly for "soldiers".

As for the first part, "With a total population of less than five thousand "...

while using numbers/ units such as thousand, feet, kilometers, and miles for continuous quantity, we use uncountable construction with "than".

For example:
The distance was less than 10 kilometers
Population of less than five thousand

Hope it helps!


Happy Prepping!

Dolly Sharma

When comparing numbers, "less" is used (the number itself is uncountable). "Population" (unlike "person / people") is a number and hence uncountable. One can count people, but not population - it is meaningless to say 1 population, 2 populations etc. On the other hand, people/ person is countable - it alright to say 1 person, 2 persons/people, 3 people etc.

With a total population of less than 200; and fewer females than ever before

First of all it is critical to understand that they are two different parts of a sentence.
Total population has been described as less than 200. Fewer than 200 would be wrong.
In the second part - the number of females is fewer than ever before. Since this is a comparison the usage of fewer is correct. Less would be wrong

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