as much as vs. as many as

[YuanqiZ223]

Which one is correct?
1. "as many as 20 percents more hours than xxx"
2. "as much as 20 percents more hours than xxx"

I understand that here "hours" is plural but it indicates time, which is noncountable. Therefore, should we make the judgment based on the meaning or just the type of noun in the sentences?

Thank you

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Both sentences sound odd to me. What's the context of the sentence?

Although we usually treat percent as uncountable - e.g. 'X is 20% less than Y' - it gets complicated when we've got a countable noun involved. For example, we'd say 'As many as 20% of people play cricket.' Time is especially tricky, as we'd say 'How many hours did you work?' (or 'How much time did you work?') but we'd probably reply 'Two hours less than last week.' (although I think 'Two hours fewer than last week.' would also be okay).

In reality, this means that we often avoid certain constructions. I'd probably say "as much as 20 percent longer than xxx"

[YuanqiZ223]

[text of copyright problem removed]

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Please read the forum guidelines before posting: unfortunately we're not allowed to post copyright material here. Also, no need to quote my previous post as it already shows up in the thread.

Tricky problem, though. It follows what I said about percentages of countable nouns - they would be treated as countable. Since we're talking about 'hours' here, then 'many' is appropriate. It's unusual that this problem hinges around that split; the split at the end of the underlined part is pretty useless, in my opinion.

[PrashantS209]

"percentages of countable nouns - they would be treated as countable"

Is this rule applicable even when we know that the percentage of countable nouns is not a whole number? For example 35 % of 10 people.

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Please can you describe a situation in which you'd use 35% of 10 people?

[PrashantS209]

Sorry it was bit difficult to come up with a sensible sentence with ‘people’. Apologies for not thinking of a proper sentence before posting that comment. How about these? Which one is correct? Here 15 % of 10 is not a whole number.

a) Pilots at Yak Airlines fly as many as 15 percent more hours per month than pilots at Yeti Airlines, who fly 10 hours per month.

b) Pilots at Yak Airlines fly as much as 15 percent more hours per month than pilots at Yeti Airlines, who fly 10 hours per month.

(I assumed ‘as much as 15 percent more hours per month’ is not an object, so did not included fly or do at the end of the sentence. If my assumption is incorrect we could put it this way: Pilots at Yak Airlines fly as many as 15 percent more hours per month than pilots at Yeti Airlines, who fly 10 hours per month, do)

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Yes, I wanted you to feel that tension: if something is countable, then it's quite hard to find a case in which we take non-integer quantity.

Nice example, and I can see that you're referring to SC 794 from OG2020. It's quite a clever problem as it trades on the fact that 'hours' are countable, but 'time' is uncountable. I'd look at this one quite simply: since we have a plural 'hours', then we need 'many'. We could write 'as much as 20 percent more time'. Your addition of a modifier to try to introduce a non-integer doesn't make a difference; the sentence is still discussing the countable 'hours'.

As for the inclusion or not of 'do', note that the OG example includes 'do', making clear that we're comparing the hours that one group fly, with the hours that another group fly.

Ending the sentence with the word 'do' alone after a comma sounds very clunky to my ears. Although I'm pretty sure GMAT wouldn't test you on this, I'd expect something like the following:
Pilots at Yak Airlines fly as many as 15 percent more hours per month than pilots at Yeti Airlines do, who fly 10 hours per month.

[PrashantS209]

Makes sense. Thank you.

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

You're welcome.