I want to reduce my sentence to a shorter sentence. My actual intention is:
In real-type representations, k is 1, in complex-type representations, k is 2, and in quaternion-type representations, k is 4.
I wrote it as follows:
k is 1, 2, and 4 for real-type, complex-type, and quaternion-type irreducible representation, respectively.
However, my supervisor said the correct sentence is:
k is 1, 2, or 4 for real-type, complex-type, or quaternion-type irreducible representation, respectively.
I thought, since in the actual sentence I have "and", in the reduced one I need to use "and". However, because it is describing three distinct cases and each case is exclusive, we need to use "or".
Would someone explain this to me? In grammatical English classes, I have learned to think like the first case.