I’m sorry if this seems dumb. I tend to take things literally and “mutual” and “exclusive” seem to be antonyms but mutually exclusive is a term used a lot and it confuses the crap out of me. I’m a native English speaker also.
Does it mean that the two things CAN exist together? I feel like my brain does gymnastics trying to understand the term; I’m not a dumb person but this term just totally eludes me!
Please don’t attack me, just trying to not feel stupid.
In: 49
This is how I explain it (part of my job is survey making). Say you had a survey that asked about age and the options were: 0-10, 10-20, 20-30, 30+. How would someone who is exactly 20 answer? 10-20 or 20-30? The options aren’t mutually exclusive if they overlap like that. A better survey would look like this: 0-9, 10-19, 20-29, 30+. Now each age has one category and therefore are mutually exclusive.
Latest Answers