Final answer:
The student's question involves understanding necessary and sufficient conditions, which describe logical relations where one condition can guarantee or require the occurrence of another in logical statements.
Step-by-step explanation:
The student's question pertains to the concept of necessary and sufficient conditions, which are used to discuss logical relationships between two statements. In logic, a sufficient condition is an event or state of affairs that guarantees the occurrence of another event. For example, being a dog is a sufficient condition for being a mammal, as it ensures that the subject is a mammal, but there are other animals that are also mammals, so it is not a necessary condition. A necessary condition is a circumstance in which, if it is not met, the event cannot occur. For instance, being unmarried is a necessary condition for being a bachelor, because one cannot be a bachelor if they are married.
In the statement 'Bo's being taller than Sam is both a necessary condition and a sufficient condition for Sam's being shorter than Bo,' we can see that one state (Bo being taller) inherently requires the other state (Sam being shorter) and vice versa, establishing a bi-conditional relationship between the two states.