"as many as" usage!

[Someonekicked]

Hi,

I guess its an ESL issue, Im taking the GRE, and one question in the
quantitative part was:


"twice as many boys as girls earned ..."

I interpreted it as the number of girls is twice the number of boys, but it
turns out it is the other way around!
I tried to search online (google) for some tutorial for "as many as", but
found none; do you have any links for such tutorial? or if anyone can help
explaining how "as many as" can be used in different situations, and what it
means every time, it is very confusing to me.

thx in advance!

[Chris Croughton]

On Mon, 2 Jan 2006 12:06:19 -0500, Someonekicked

Post by Someonekicked
I guess its an ESL issue, Im taking the GRE, and one question in the
"twice as many boys as girls earned ..."
I interpreted it as the number of girls is twice the number of boys, but it
turns out it is the other way around!

Indeed it is. It's a very common idiom, "I have eaten twice as many
apples as my brother".

Post by Someonekicked
I tried to search online (google) for some tutorial for "as many as", but
found none; do you have any links for such tutorial? or if anyone can help
explaining how "as many as" can be used in different situations, and what it
means every time, it is very confusing to me.

It always means a ratio between the first and the second, in that order.
If you have twice as many A as B then the number of A divided by the
number of B is 2. If the number is left out then it's equal ("there
were as many boys as girls" means that the numbers of each were the
same; "about" can be used to give some fuzziness or approximation,
"almost" to mean that the number of A was not quite as large as stated).
I can't think of any exceptions the way you interpreted it.

Chris C