Let's break down this problem step-by-step:
1. We have a class size of 125 students.
2. Out of these, we know that 52 students drink tea and 88 students drink coffee.
3. However, this does not mean that 52 + 88 = 140 students drink tea or coffee, because there are students who drink both tea and coffee.
4. We also know that there are 5 students who do not drink either tea or coffee. That leaves us with 125 - 5 = 120 students who drink either tea, coffee or both.
5. To figure out how many students drink both coffee and tea, we subtract the number of students who drink tea and the number who drink coffee from the total number of students who drink tea or coffee.
6. So, the number of students who drink both coffee and tea would be 120 - (52 + 88) = 120 -140 = -20 students.
Here comes a controversial and confusing result. Why do we have a negative number of students?
The value is negative because our initial assumptions or the given values are incorrect. The total number of tea drinkers and coffee drinkers cannot exceed the total class size, each student is counted only once within these counts. So, this must be a mistake in the problem or its given values. In reality, there should be an overlap in the students who drink tea and coffee in the total counts, hence you cannot have more students drinking tea and coffee than there are in class. This is why the result is negative and does not make sense realistically.