Overlapping Sets – Neither and Both

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At a given school, the number of students enrolled in neither an accounting nor a finance course is how much greater than the number of students enrolled in both?

(1) There are 250 students enrolled in an accounting course.

(2) There are 280 students enrolled in a finance course.

Review: Overlapping Sets - Neither and Both


Explanation

We are given two logical categories: enrolled folks in accounting and those in finance. Those categories may overlap. So you can imagine a 2 x 2 table of possible statuses for any given individual, enrolled in just one, just the other, neither, or both. And the numbers in that 2 x 2 add up to appropriate total numbers in the rows and columns. We look at the statements. We know we will have to evaluate the statements separately, but we can tell at a glance that we don't have enough information here. We need way more information than is given by each statement individually or by either together. You could see this by writing out the table, or by considering the equation



Even with the statements combined, we are trying to solve one equation with three variables.

The correct answer is (E).


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