CSET Social Science - independent foundations cheat sheet

Trade networks such as the Silk Roads and Indian Ocean routes spread goods, religions, and technologies across regions.

The Columbian Exchange transferred crops, animals, people, and diseases, with devastating demographic effects in the Americas.

Enlightenment ideas and economic change influenced Atlantic revolutions and the Industrial Revolution.

World War I and World War II had multiple causes; immediate triggers differ from long-term tensions.

The Cold War was fought through alliances, aid, espionage, and proxy conflicts rather than direct superpower war.

Federalism divides authority between national and state governments; the Bill of Rights was originally a limit on the federal government.

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments addressed slavery, citizenship/equal protection, and voting rights, respectively.

Sectional crises over slavery’s expansion preceded the Civil War; no single event explains secession alone.

Progressive reforms included antitrust enforcement, labor regulation, and the Nineteenth Amendment’s women’s suffrage.

Brown v. Board relied on Fourteenth Amendment equal protection to reject racial segregation in public schools.

Federalism allocates power between the national government and the states; the Tenth Amendment reserves undelegated powers.

Separation of powers and checks and balances prevent any one branch from acting without limit.

Judicial review, established in Marbury v. Madison, lets courts invalidate unconstitutional laws.

Most Bill of Rights protections apply to states through Fourteenth Amendment incorporation.

Voting amendments address racial and sex discrimination, poll taxes in federal elections, and age-based denial to citizens eighteen and older; enforcement and actual access require separate historical analysis.

Opportunity cost is the next-best alternative forgone and can have a monetary valuation.

A shortage at a price is different from scarcity of resources across competing uses.

An own-price movement differs from a demand or supply shift.

State the point, initial-base or midpoint elasticity convention.

Revenue and profit can move in different directions.

State the market structure and cost model before using a marginal hiring or output condition.

Zero profit on a supplied short-run cost curve is not automatically a long-run optimum.

A positive unit contribution does not by itself establish a positive total profit.

Revenue recognition, receivables and cash collection can occur at different times.

Labor demand is derived from the value of output, with competitive and monopsony conditions distinguished.

A public good is identified by rivalry and exclusion conditions, not by state ownership.

Use marginal social and private benefits/costs within the specified model.

All map projections distort; match the projection to the purpose.

Scale is linear, but area scales by the square of the linear factor.

Contour spacing indicates slope steepness; the interval is constant.

Density is not distribution; population pyramids reveal age and sex structure.

Push factors drive people away; pull factors attract them.

Formal, functional, and perceptual regions are different analytical tools.

Source analysis asks who created a source, when, for whom, and why; bias shapes emphasis but does not automatically make a source false.

Read data displays by checking title, units, labels, legend, and scale before interpreting numbers.

Distinguish percentage points from relative percent change and absolute counts from rates.

Maps use projections that distort area, shape, distance, or direction; legends and scales are essential.

Correlation alone does not establish causation; corroborate sources and separate immediate triggers from long-term causes.

Primary sources are evidence, not automatic truth.

Corroborate before concluding; one source rarely proves a trend.

Arguments need a claim, specific evidence, and reasoning.

Check units, rates, sample size, and axes before trusting a graph.

Lateral reading tests a source by leaving it for independent coverage.

Indigenous diversity and continuing presence are central, not a preface erased by colonization.

Missionization, secularization and ranchos had different institutions and effects on land and labor.

Gold discovery1848and statehood1850are distinct events within broader war and migration histories.

Free-state status did not eliminate dispossession, discrimination or coerced labor.