"At most as many" — what does it mean? [closed]

I've been given the following question as a homework:

If h is consistent, then A* - CSCS will expand at most as many nodes as A* graph search.

English not being my native language, I'm kind of struggling to understand the true meaning of the text in bold in the context of this sentence.

From what I understand, A* - CSCS will always expand fewer or the same amount of nodes then A* graph search. That is, the number of nodes that A* graph search expands will always be larger or equal to the number of nodes that A* - CSCS expands.

Is this correct?

Sorry for bringing out the question involving mathematics. What I need is a linguistic explanation of the sentence, not help in mathematics.

Solution 1:

You are correct.

Read it this way:

If h is consistent, then at most A* - CSCS will expand as many nodes as A* graph search.

Or, more naturally:

If h is consistent, then A* - CSCS will not expand any more nodes than A* graph search.

Solution 2:

Yes, your understanding is correct. At most as many as can usually be replaced by no more than; I don't know why the author chose this unusual form of words.