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gmatchase
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With less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and few 30 Sep 2012, 19:36
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Be sure to select an answer first to save it in the Error Log before revealing the correct answer (OA)!

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35% (medium)

Question Stats:

62% (00:57) correct 38% (00:59) wrong based on 819 sessions

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With less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer acceptances by guest-speakers than expected, the one-day symposium on art and religion was canceled for lack of interest.

(A) less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer
(B) fewer than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and less
(C) fewer than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer
(D) lesser than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer
(E) less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and as few
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MarkSullivan
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With less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and few 30 Sep 2012, 20:05
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gmatchase
With less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer acceptances by guest-speakers than expected, the one-day symposium on art and religion was canceled for lack of interest.

(A) less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer
(B) fewer than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and less
(C) fewer than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer
(D) lesser than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer
(E) less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and as few


Please answer with your explanations
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Right away, we should notice that this SC problem boils down to two "less vs. fewer" splits. Note that this is *not* very GMAT-like, but it is a good problem for making sure you've mastered this issue.

Before we go any further, you should all take a few seconds to watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGWiTvYZR_w

So, why does Weird Al think we should say "15 items or fewer" rather than "15 items or less"? This boils down to the difference between countable and uncountable nouns.

Let's look at an easier examples. "Hats" is a countable noun, but "water" is an uncountable noun. We say "fewer hats" but "less water". In the grocery store, "items" is of course a countable noun – after all, the whole point of that sign is to get you count your items to make sure you have fewer than 15 things in your shopping cart.

In this particular sentence, we're thinking about fewer than / less than 30K dollars, and fewer / less acceptances.

"Acceptances" is clearly countable, so eliminate (B). (E) incorrectly uses "as few" instead of "fewer" – the "as few" construction goes "as few X as Y" and should be used only for comparisons. Eliminate (E).

The dollar portion is trickier. We can definitely count our money, but we actually treat "money" as an uncountable noun (e.g., "We all have less money than we would like.") What about dollars? If you actually have 30K one dollar bills, then treat it as countable (you can count the dollars out one-by-one); otherwise, "30K dollars" is acting as an amount and should be treated as uncountable.

Think about the following analogy: "dollars" is to "water" as "dollar bills" is to "water molecules". "Dollars" and "water" should both be treated as uncountable, whereas "dollar bills" and "water molecules" are clearly countable.

All of this is to say that in the initial split we should go with "less than". Eliminate (C).

In (D), "lesser than" is unidiomatic. This leaves (A) as the correct answer.

Cheers,
Mark
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With less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and few 18 Feb 2016, 12:43
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With less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer acceptances by guest speakers than expected, the one-day symposium on art and religion was canceled for lack of interest.

(A) less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer

(B) fewer than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and less

(C) fewer than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer

(D) lesser than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer

(E) less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and as few
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Dear carcass,
My respected colleague, thank you for posting this question. :-) This is a straightforward questions on countable vs. uncountable issues. Two relevant blogs:
GMAT Grammar: Less vs. Fewer
GMAT Comparisons: More vs. Greater and Less vs. Fewer
The GMAT loves to test these things because in colloquial US speech, mistakes of this kind are rampant. For example, virtually every grocery store in America has signs for an express lane that say something such as "12 items or less." The grammar of my fellow US citizens embarrasses me!

"acceptances" = this is plural, indicating that these are countable. Apparently, we can count how many acceptances we have gotten in this instance. Any time we would use the question "how many?" we are in the countable case. In the countable case, we need to say "fewer acceptances," not "less acceptances."

The other case is a little trickier and deserves comment. With many common quantities, such as time, distance, and money, when we ask the questions about "how much?" we typically get a numerical answer:
How much time? Two hours.
How much distance? 73 miles.
How much money? Thirty thousand dollars.
Thus, in cases in which amounts in units of time or distance or money are used, this is construed as an answer to the question "how much time/distance/money?" Thus, even though the units are plural, this is construed as the uncountable case. The question "how much?" is the signal of the uncountable case. For the uncountable case, we use "less." Another way to say this is that when we are talking about dollars, the word "money" is implied:
...less money than thirty thousand dollars ...
which is shortened to
...less than thirty thousand dollars ...

Thus, we need:
... less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer acceptances by guest speakers than expected ...
These are correct only in (A), the OA.

Mike :-)
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With less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and few 02 Nov 2020, 03:15
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gmatchase
With less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer acceptances by guest-speakers than expected, the one-day symposium on art and religion was canceled for lack of interest.

(A) less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer
(B) fewer than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and less
(C) fewer than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer
(D) lesser than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and fewer
(E) less than thirty thousand dollars in advance ticket sales and as few
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OFFICIAL EXPLANATION



A

This question is about quantity words, as you probably suspected just from looking at the answer choices. When it comes to money, you use fewer if you are referring to the number of actual bills you have, but less if you are referring to the total amount and don’t know the actual number of bills. This would get you down to choices A and E. Acceptances, however, can be counted, so in the second half of the underlined portion of the underlined sentence, you would use fewer. If you were tempted by choice E, you didn’t notice that it created a new idiomatic error: Would you say as few than or as few as? The best answer is choice A.
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