What query expression should be used to select earthquake features with a magnitude greater than 4 in ArcMap?

Selecting earthquake features with a magnitude greater than 4 requires a proper understanding of how to formulate a query expression in ArcMap. The most suitable query expression for this purpose is "MAGNITUDE > 4.0." This is a numerical comparison and correctly uses the greater-than operator without quotation marks, which is essential for ensuring that the field "MAGNITUDE," which is numeric, is compared against the value 4.0.

Using "MAGNITUDE >= 4.0" would also retrieve the features with a magnitude of exactly 4, which is not specified in the question's requirement of being strictly greater than 4. Hence, this option does not meet the criteria of the query. The correct interpretation does not include boundary or equality conditions, therefore "MAGNITUDE > 4.0" correctly targets only those features that meet the criteria of being greater than 4.