High School students prefer Math or English

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A high school gym class has 60 students, all whom have different favorite subjects. In a recent survey, two-thirds of them marked either math or English as their favorite subjects, while the remaining one-third marked one of the other subjects as their favorite. How many of the students marked English as their favorite subject?

(1) There are more than twice as many students who marked English as their favorite subject than there are students who marked math as their favorite subject.

(2) There are more than 12 students who marked math as their favorite subject.

At first the problem looked like a typical matrix problem. But the key words in the statements are "more than"

I guessed the OA which is C.

Can someone explain why? and if so, give the algebraic solution to it.

Thanks many.
Source: — Data Sufficiency |

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by Jim@StratusPrep » Thu May 23, 2013 5:26 am
There are 40 students (2/3 of 60) that you are working with.

1) More than twice as many who have English as there favorite subject means E > 26 or M < 14.

2) This says M > 12


Putting them together 12 < M < 14, or 13 students prefer math
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by faraz_jeddah » Sat May 25, 2013 1:32 am
Jim@StratusPrep wrote:There are 40 students (2/3 of 60) that you are working with.

1) More than twice as many who have English as there favorite subject means E > 26 or M < 14.

2) This says M > 12


Putting them together 12 < M < 14, or 13 students prefer math
Aah thanks. I missed that we had to work with only 40 students.