The only way that bookstores can profitably sell books at below-market prices is to get the books at a discount from ...

ponyo January 13, 2021

Question 8: either/or and both

Hi, I was confused about the last prompt in question 8, which says that "either cater to mass tastes or have exclusive access to a large specialized market, such as medical textbooks, or both". In the solution, you seemed to ignore the last "both" part, which is very confusing to me. Because of the "both" part, I thought that if the seller is not catering to the public, it would either be having exclusive access to the specialised market or have nothing. Could you clarify how to solve this question please?

Replies

Create a free account to read and take part in forum discussions.

Already have an account? log in

shunhe January 14, 2021

Hi @ponyo,

Thanks for the question! What “either/or and both” means is that at least one of the two conditions have to be true, but both the conditions could be true. So for example, if someone says something like “Tomorrow it’ll rain, or snow, or both,” it means at least one of the two will happen, but it could also rain and snow. So in this context, it means that the seller can cater to mass tastes, or it has exclusive access, or both are true. This is also known as the “inclusive or.” This is as opposed to the “exclusive” or. For example, if a waiter asks you, “do you want soup or salad,” you’re generally not supposed to reply with “both.”

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.

First Name* July 26, 2021

I'm not sure why on the explanation it puts 'not DFP' in the necessary conditional spot and 'not HSV' in the sufficient spot for the second premise on the stimulus summary because the 'unless...' introduces a necessary condition which is HSV, not DFP....