Answer from cs61c-ax (Amanda Alfonso 15906918) for Question 1
No, C does not need all these statements.  Essentially, all the above statements could have been dropped and instead implemented using basic comparisons (<, >, ==, !=, <=, >=).  I believe the designers of C included all these options, though, to make programming easier for humans to understand.  A programmers intent may be depicted more clearly with a certain convention, where a long set of basic comparisons would often get complicated and difficult to decipher.