Hi, It's the maximum number of times a state appears in the list. To get the maximum number of people affected (sensible thing to ask), you'd need to be able to add counts, and we're only covering that on Wednesday, or use Awk, which we'll be covering in a few weeks. I wanted you to only have to use the tools we'd covered when the assignment was released. IE beyond what was reasonable to ask in the context. Cheers MichaelW