Friday, August 9, 2013

Question on a quantity comparison



I read a sentence:





There were more than five times the number of students in chemistry as the number of students in physics.




Does that mean (1) the number of students in chemistry divided by the number of students in physics is greater than five or (2) the number of students in physics divided by the number of students in chemistry is greater than five?



I know what "five times as much" means, but I'm confused by the sentence above.


Answer



Chemistry had more students. I would use ‘than’ in place of the ‘as’ though. ‘As’ doesn’t sound quite right to me.


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