gmat prep

[sudaif]

What is wrong with answer choice D?
Is it wrong because it is wordy?
Is "have had as a focus" incorrect?
Can "they" refer to media analyses?

Analyzing campaign expenditures, the media has had as a focus the high costs and low ethics of campaign finance, but they have generally overlooked the cost of actually administering elections, which includes facilities, transport, printing, staffing, and technology.
a.
b. Analyses of campaign expenditures by the media has been focused on
c. In analyzing campaign expenditures, the media have focused on
d. Media analyses of campaign expenditures have had as a focus
e. In their analysis of campaign expenditures, the media has been focusing on.

OA C

[RonPurewal]

FIRST QUESTION:
is this question actually from the official gmat prep software? i'd like to verify that this is the case before we do a ton of analysis on it.

What is wrong with answer choice D?
Is it wrong because it is wordy?

it does seem that "have had as a focus" is a little bit more awkward than "have focused on", but i find it extremely unlikely that such a subtle difference would be the sole basis for elimination of a choice.

Is "have had as a focus" incorrect?

i don't think that this is incorrect, no. however, occasionally the gmat makes some surprising and strange decisions regarding idiomatic usage, so i can't say this with 100% certainty until we see some official confirmation, one way or the other.

Can "they" refer to media analyses?

make sure you know that pronoun ambiguity is not a criterion on which you can definitively eliminate. in other words, just because a pronoun may be ambiguous does not mean that it's necessarily wrong.
for more details, see this post:
post40400.html#p40400

[sudaif]

i came across this question on GMAT prep
thanks!

[mschwrtz]

Thanks for clarifying sudaif. Did Ron answer your question?

[sudaif]

well yes, for the most part. but there was still one question outstanding - probably because I didn't express it clearly enough.
let me give it another shot.
When i asked...can "they" refer to media analyses? I was trying to figure out if it would be okay for the sentence to read
"media analyses (or they) have generally overlooked the cost of actually administering elections, which includes facilities, transport, printing, staffing, and technology."
To paraphrase, the meaning of the sentence is not distorted if you say the "media analyses overlooked the cost of...." or is it?

Thanks M!

[RonPurewal]

well yes, for the most part. but there was still one question outstanding - probably because I didn't express it clearly enough.
let me give it another shot.
When i asked...can "they" refer to media analyses? I was trying to figure out if it would be okay for the sentence to read
"media analyses (or they) have generally overlooked the cost of actually administering elections, which includes facilities, transport, printing, staffing, and technology."
To paraphrase, the meaning of the sentence is not distorted if you say the "media analyses overlooked the cost of...." or is it?

Thanks M!

yes, "they" could refer to media analyses -- i'm quite sure that could be correct, too. (in fact, in terms of making purely logical sense, i think that's actually a little bit better.)

--

one thing i didn't mention above, though, because it didn't directly answer any of your questions -- but which is very important:
the best way to choose between (c) and (d) is to use PARALLELISM.

(c)
have focused on...
have overlooked...
perfectly parallel.

(d)
have had as a focus...
have overlooked...
not parallel (or, at least, badly inferior to the parallelism in (c).)

(c) wins.

[madhavbatra]

yes, "they" could refer to media analyses -- i'm quite sure that could be correct, too. (in fact, in terms of making purely logical sense, i think that's actually a little bit better.)

Hi Ron.

but isnt "media" in media analyses an adjective and therefore they, a pronoun, cannot refer to an adjective. I eliminated D based on this reasoning. Please correct me if i'm wrong.

[pmmalkan+gmat]

Isn't "media" a singular noun? Here we are talking about "media" as similar to "the press" right?

So I thought it would be singular. As in a collective noun which is singular. Just like "army", "audience", etc...

Somehow my native ear is always like -

The media IS such a pain... The media HAS reported false news again.

I thought only if we see "media" to be the plural of "medium" it would take a plural verb form.

What am I doing wrong here? Or is my native ear wrong ?

Thank you.

[ChrisB]

Hi,

Good questions from the last two posters:

1. Media is a tough one because media historically is the plural form of "medium." In American English, media is understood to be a collective noun and thus singular. If I had to choose between a split of the two I'd curse the GMAT to the depths of Hades, and then pick media as a singular collective noun. That is because media in this sentence is used in the context of the news industry and by convention "news media" is a singular collective noun. That said, I'd then get this problem wrong. In the future, know that media is plural and fits into the same special category as data in that they are plural forms of singular nouns medium and datum respectively.

2. Regarding pronoun agreement between "they" and "media analyses," one must understand that the pronoun takes the place of a noun. Here analyses is the noun that is replaced by they. "Media" is an adjective that makes it clear what type of 'analyses' is discussed in the sentence. Analyses and they agree in number but analyses does not make sense when substituted in for "they" in the non-underlined portion of the sentence.

To see this insert analyses where you see they in this sentence: "but they have generally overlooked" becaomes "but media analyses have generally overlooked"

The analyses can't overlook anything because they aren't something that can take action. "media", on the other hand, is a noun that can take action.

Overall, I really dislike this question because I don't think the points in #1 are an open and shut case. Perhaps the GMAT is trying to take a stand and end the use of media as a collective noun :(

Thanks!
Chris

[pmmalkan+gmat]

Thanks so much Chris :) Helps a ton !! One more rule to jot down in the flash card and memorize :)

Just a feedback - Kindly include it (Media/Data as plural) in the next edition of the MGMAT Sentence Correction Guide.

Thank you :)

[ChrisB]

You're welcome!

Chris

[madhavbatra]

Hi,

Good questions from the last two posters:

1. Media is a tough one because media historically is the plural form of "medium." In American English, media is understood to be a collective noun and thus singular. If I had to choose between a split of the two I'd curse the GMAT to the depths of Hades, and then pick media as a singular collective noun. That is because media in this sentence is used in the context of the news industry and by convention "news media" is a singular collective noun. That said, I'd then get this problem wrong. In the future, know that media is plural and fits into the same special category as data in that they are plural forms of singular nouns medium and datum respectively.

2. Regarding pronoun agreement between "they" and "media analyses," one must understand that the pronoun takes the place of a noun. Here analyses is the noun that is replaced by they. "Media" is an adjective that makes it clear what type of 'analyses' is discussed in the sentence. Analyses and they agree in number but analyses does not make sense when substituted in for "they" in the non-underlined portion of the sentence.

To see this insert analyses where you see they in this sentence: "but they have generally overlooked" becaomes "but media analyses have generally overlooked"

The analyses can't overlook anything because they aren't something that can take action. "media", on the other hand, is a noun that can take action.

Overall, I really dislike this question because I don't think the points in #1 are an open and shut case. Perhaps the GMAT is trying to take a stand and end the use of media as a collective noun :(

Thanks!
Chris

thanks very much Chris

[tim]

:)

[raquel.antonious]

Isn't it rare to see Has/Have twice in one sentence? How do we spot this error since it stands correct in an example like above? Test at 2pm tomorrow, hope I hear back soon! Thanks.

[RonPurewal]

Isn't it rare to see Has/Have twice in one sentence?

not really; the repetition of helping verbs is actually quite common, especially in parallel structures.

How do we spot this error since it stands correct in an example like above?

it's not an error, so there isn't really an answer to this question.
what makes you think that it's an error? is there some source that has actually declared that this is an error?