I was reviewing this test last night, and I feel like their explanation is a little confusing too. But here's what I got from it.
It's a setup where something that is released from rest, and reaches terminal velocity after falling 600m. The question asks about work by gravity and work by air resistance DURING that first 600m. My intuition was, velocity is down, so work by gravity is positive, and work by air resistance (going against velocity) is negative. That settles the first part.
Now what about the absolute values of work? That's the weird part, or at least it was for me. And the explanation doesn't even seem to address it, just says "here's how you calculate work by gravity, and oh, air resistance does negative work, therefore Wgrav > Wair."
I think the key is, the falling object started from REST, and accelerated down until terminal velocity was reached. At that moment, of distance traveled = 600m, he's falling at terminal velocity. So gravity must have done more work, since we started at rest, and now he still has kinetic energy pointing down.
Kind of like photoelectric effect, where a really high energy photon gives the electron it kicks off some extra energy to travel away with? Bad analogy? Probably.
I'd love if someone else has a better analysis. CoughCommissionerRaboCough.