yage
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Vinny Gambini
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2322

by yage Thu Aug 15, 2013 12:23 am

I'm confused about why the answer to this question is "at most 20 miles away" versus "at least 20 miles away". Can you explain this concept?
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noah
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Atticus Finch
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Re: 2322

by noah Tue Aug 20, 2013 11:10 am

Here's the question you're asking about (please post the text in the future):

Daniel lives 20 miles away from the nearest shopping mall, and every shopping mall is in some town.

We can infer that...

Daniel lives at most 20 miles from the nearest town.

Daniel lives at least 20 miles from the nearest town.


The important issue to grapple with here is whether it's possible for Daniel to live 5 miles from a town. The answer would be no if every town has a shopping mall, but we don't know that. We just know that every mall is in a town. So, he could live 5 miles from a mall-less town. But, since the stimulus says he lives 20 miles from the nearest mall, we know that he's 20 miles from some town, and so it can't be that it's 21 miles to the nearest town.

Got it?