Answer: John must be imagining that his state capital city is much larger than it really is. In reality, Olympia is much smaller than Seattle.
He should say that Olympia's population is about one tenth as large as Seattle's. Or, he could say that Seattle is over 10 times as large as Olympia.
Step-by-step explanation: John must be using old records. The numbers are relatively close to those from the census of 1890. At that time, The population of Seattle was about 42,800, and Olympia, 4,700, making Seattle about 9 times larger than Olympia.
John should be looking at more recent records for the population of those cities. Olympia's population, about 46,500 is much smaller than Seattle's, about 753,700. Olympia's population is about 0.062 or 1/16 the size of Seattle's.
