A certain company operates a website, Z, which carries articles only under three categories: world news, news from Country C, and general interest. The company sent a questionnaire to all subscribers—all of whom responded—with the intention of changing the number of articles allocated to any of the three categories if the responses of a majority of all subscribers indicated they would like to see more or fewer articles in that category. Did the company reduce the number of articles in any of the three categories and increase the number of articles in another of the three categories on Website Z?(1) Most subscribers in Country C conveyed that Z carried too many news articles that were irrelevant to them.
This says that subscribers in
Country C, a subset of all subscribers, conveyed something, but who cares? We don’t know how big the Country C group is compared to all subscribers. If Country C subscribers make up only 1% of the total, then whatever they think has little impact on what a majority of all subscribers indicate. So (1) tells us nothing about whether any of the three categories must be increased or decreased. Not sufficient.
(2) Most subscribers conveyed that Z carried too many articles on entertainment and science.
Even if we assume entertainment and science articles belong to general interest, what if these articles are only a tiny part of the articles on general interest? If subscribers think that entertainment and science is too much, it still doesn’t mean that articles on general interest as a whole are too much. They may simply want fewer of that specific subset, not fewer general-interest articles overall. Not sufficient.
(1) + (2) When we combine both statements, we still only know that some subset of subscribers thinks something, and all subscribers think something about a subset of general interest. None of this forces a majority to want fewer articles in any entire category or more articles in any category. Not sufficient.
Answer: E.