maaadhu wrote:
sbhghosh80 wrote:
A recent survey regarding the use of the Internet by the nation’s top business leaders found that nearly ninety-five percent of them are subscribed to business-related RSS feeds, almost the same as the number of those who have subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal.
1. the same as the number of those who have subscriptions to
2. similar to the number who subscribe to
3. equivalent to those who have subscriptions for
4. as much as the number of those who subscribe to
5. as much as are subscribed to
Easy pick between D & E..E is correct.
The number is always singular... so "the number of those who subscribe" is incorrect
Be careful because you are incorrectly analyzing S/V agreement within a relative clause.
The relative clause "who subscribe" follows the noun phrase "the number of those," so either it refers to the closest noun and describes "those" or it refers to the entire noun phrase and describes "the number." Because it begins with the relative pronoun "who," it is describing a person and must describe "those."
Since "those" is plural, "subscribe" is correctly plural in D. We can also see this because the people being referred to by "those" are doing the subscribing, not "the number."
D is wrong for other reasons (using "number" even though percentages are being compared, using "much" to describe a number, and failing to retain the passive voice that the original sentence uses), but you should not eliminate it for having a plural verb.