can somebody help me out with this question?

[RonPurewal]

no, "ones" is a legitimate word. here's a sentence in which it's used correctly:
once the new phones are available, people will no longer pay full price for the older ones.

in terms of meaning, "ones" is very similar to "those", as used in comparisons (e.g., Today's electric cars are much more reliable than those of just a few years ago).
on this exam, you will never have to decide which of these two to use.

[chengkeh798]

no, "ones" is a legitimate word. here's a sentence in which it's used correctly:
once the new phones are available, people will no longer pay full price for the older ones.

in terms of meaning, "ones" is very similar to "those", as used in comparisons (e.g., Today's electric cars are much more reliable than those of just a few years ago).
on this exam, you will never have to decide which of these two to use.

Thanks a lot. I got it
Then i am a little confused about choice E.
here is what you wrote in previous posts:
quote:
first, i'm about 99% sure that we are not allowed to use "ones" to refer to people.

second, i'm also about 99% sure that "THE ones" must refer back to "THE some other noun".
end
Then I do not understand why we are not allowed to use "ones" to refer to people.

Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white shark, fewer than the people (ones/those) killed by bees
I think this sentence is correct.

Besides, I also do not understand the meaning of your second comment "i'm also about 99% sure that "THE ones" must refer back to "THE some other noun", how is this clause related to choice E.
Thanks in advance!

[RonPurewal]

the most important thing i can say, here, is that you need to stop thinking about these parts of this problem!

you can solve this problem just by using basic parallelism (have been killed by the shark || have been killed by bee stings) -- and that's what you SHOULD be doing here.
the other parts of these answer choices are basically just there to confuse you and waste your time, **IF** you get DISTRACTED from MAJOR/FUNDAMENTAL topics.

parallelism is the single most fundamental concept tested in all of SC. therefore, in choices where parallelism is clearly an issue, there will very often be lots of other distractions. don't get distracted!

...really, i can guarantee that you're wasting your time by pursuing this particular topic further.
in fact, "wasting your time" would be the BEST possible scenario. more likely, by studying this topic, you'll actually teach yourself NOT to concentrate on basics/fundamentals -- and your SC performance will suffer accordingly.

[XINH690]

Hi, Ron
about B. Do we need 'those' after fewer than, because i remember in the SC book , we cannot omit the word that did not come the other part of the clause.

Don't we need some demonstrative pronoun here to refer back to people, which is absent in B. Thus I chose E.

Would "fewer than those" be a correct answer? Please explain.

[this post has been edited from the original version]

when you consider parallel constructions, your main goal is just to pick the choice with the best parallelism.
if you were a writer, then you would need all kinds of subtle intuition about this kind of thing -- because writers don't get multiple-choice options!
but you get multiple-choice options, so we needn't complicate the issue any more than necessary.

in the correct answer, we have "have been killed by x" and "have been killed by y".
perfect.
you really aren't going to do any better than that!

in the choice with "those killed by bee stings" -- note that we don't have "people killed by the great white shark" in the other part.

this is really annoying at first, but, once you get used to this mentality, you'll find that it's one of the easier things to do on SC.
if you are a "quant person", you should be able to do these sorts of eliminations very quickly, because they operate on essentially mathematical principles (unlike, say, idiom or modifier issues).

Also, can someone comment on the difference between usage of comma and hyphen in the options? When would each be correct or incorrect?

it's not a hyphen, actually; it's a dash. hyphens are shorter, and are used within two-part words (such as "two-part").
in this context, the dash essentially serves the same purpose as a comma. the only difference is that you don't use dashes at random; you use them when there is some special emphasis or irony (or both) in what you're saying.

example:
Joe, who is from Miami, complained about the cold of the Las Vegas winter. --> no irony; this makes perfect sense, since las vegas is much colder than miami in winter. therefore, no reason to use dashes.
Joe -- who is from Duluth -- complained about the cold of the Las Vegas winter. --> extreme irony, since duluth is about 70 degrees colder than las vegas in the winter.

same sort of deal here: there's considerable irony in the fact that the formidable shark has fewer kills under its belt than does the cute lil yellow fuzzy bee.

as a bonus, the dash also adds a degree of clarity, since "the great white shark" is already followed by one comma + appositive modifier; adding another modifier after another comma would muddy the waters a bit too much for my liking (and, apparently, for the test writers' liking as well).

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

I can't understand what you're asking here, but your approach seems to have certain weaknesses. Problems from the Official Guide or from GMAT Prep are especially useful to study: they give good examples of the kind of thing that you'll see in the real test. Since GMAC doesn't publish a 'GMAT syllabus', we rely on these problems to discover the style and content of the real test. So don't waste your time questioning if a correct answer is correct, but do spend time thinking why a correct answer is correct. Consequently, if you have a rule that is contradicted by an official answer, then clearly your rule is incorrect.

i remember in the SC book , we cannot omit the word that did not come the other part of the clause.

I have no idea which rule you're referring to from our SC book. This sentence makes no sense to me! Please tell me which page you're referring to. Of course, our books get updated, and you may find some details in our books that are out of date or incorrect (although we try our hardest here).

Finally, why did you quote that long post from Ron? Do you have a question about it? To keep our forums as tidy and user-friendly as possible, please avoid long quotes (after all, we can all see the post above). If you need to quote something, please be succinct.