I was inspired by What is the meaning of “one-half meter”? to ask this follow-on question.
The article at the following link uses the phrase "up to" in a possibly ambiguous way.
And Clipper will provide an amazing set of eyes, flying to within 25km of the surface in long, looping orbits and returning images with a resolution of up to one-half meter per pixel. By comparison, even the best images of Pluto captured by New Horizons were about 70 meters per pixel.
I believe that the intended meaning is that the resolution of the images will be at best 0.5 meter per pixel. Therefore, no images would have a resolution of 0.1 meter per pixel, but some images might be at 1 meter per pixel.
However, a literal interpretation could be that "up to" refers to "one-half meter". Therefore, 1 meter per pixel could not happen but 0.1 meter per pixel could happen.
Is the article poorly worded, or is this a correct usage of "up to"?
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I thought of an example that I think suffers from the exact same ambiguity, but that doesn't have the complexity of the technical meaning of "resolution" confusing things.
From an ad - Each of our products are on sale this week at amazing prices of up to 70% of retail. Compare these prices to our competitor's prices of 90% of retail.
Based on that ad, could there be a sale price of 60% of retail? How about 80% of retail? I don't think that the second sentence of the ad removes the ambiguity.
Maybe I'm just being too literal though.