Hi All,

I am kind of struggling with "countable/non-countable nouns" and "the need to make parallel structure while comparing two items" as mentioned by Ron, "you can't use parallel constructions with "those"/"that"/"the ones"/etc unless they are EXACTLY PARALLEL to whatever shows up in the other part", he said.
Source: https://www.beatthegmat.com/only-seven-p ... 64-15.html

The question in above thread is

Only seven people this century have been killed by the great white shark, the man-eater of the movies-less than those killed by bee stings.

A. movies-less than those
B. movies-fewer than have been
C. movies, which is less than those
D. movies, a number lower than the people
E. movies, fewer than the ones

we selected B over E because it is a parallel construction. We also said that "seven people" is a countable noun; hence use fewer. I still don''t understand why "number of people" is non-countable and "seven people". Can someone please help me with this?

About parallelism, at first I followed what Ron said but now lets look at this -

"His assets are 3 times greater than what they were before"

I don't see anything wrong in it even though both sides are not parallel; they have different tenses. Can someone please please help me with this topic as well?

I am sorry for behaving thick but I don't want to stay confused on it.

Thank you in advance!