Praxis 5081 cheat sheet

1607: Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America; 1620: Mayflower Compact signed by Plymouth settlers.

1776 Declaration of Independence; 1781 Articles of Confederation ratified; 1787 Constitution drafted in Philadelphia; 1791 Bill of Rights ratified.

Marbury v. Madison (1803) established judicial review; McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) upheld implied federal powers and national supremacy.

Civil War 1861–1865; Emancipation Proclamation effective January 1, 1863; Thirteenth Amendment 1865, Fourteenth 1868, Fifteenth 1870.

Reconstruction ended with the Compromise of 1877; subsequent Jim Crow laws were upheld by Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

Progressive Era amendments: Sixteenth (income tax, 1913), Seventeenth (direct election of senators, 1913), Eighteenth (Prohibition, 1919), Nineteenth (women's suffrage, 1920).

Great Depression began with the October 1929 stock market crash; New Deal programs included the FDIC (1933) and the Social Security Act (1935).

Civil rights milestones: Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Civil Rights Act (1964), Voting Rights Act (1965).

Neolithic Revolution (~10,000 BCE): agriculture and settled villages emerged independently in Mesopotamia, the Nile valley, the Indus valley, the Yellow River valley, and the Andes.

Classical states: Athenian democracy (5th century BCE), Roman Republic (509 BCE), Roman Empire (27 BCE), Han China, and Maurya/Gupta India.

476 CE: fall of the Western Roman Empire; 1453: Ottoman conquest of Constantinople ends the Byzantine Empire.

Age of Exploration: Columbus 1492, Vasco da Gama reaches India 1498, Magellan expedition circumnavigates 1519–1522; the Columbian Exchange follows.

Reformation began with Luther's Ninety-Five Theses (1517); the Peace of Westphalia (1648) ended the Thirty Years' War and shaped the sovereign-state system.

Industrial Revolution began in Britain around 1750, driven by steam power, textiles, and coal; urbanization and factory labor followed.

World War I 1914–1918; Russian Revolution 1917; Treaty of Versailles 1919; World War II 1939–1945; atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 1945.

Cold War ~1947–1991: NATO (1949) versus Warsaw Pact (1955), Marshall Plan, proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam, and decolonization across Africa and Asia.

Constitution articles: I legislative, II executive, III judicial, IV federalism, V amendment, VI supremacy clause, VII ratification.

Checks and balances: presidential veto; two-thirds override in both chambers; Senate confirms appointments and ratifies treaties; courts exercise judicial review.

Bill to law: majority in House and Senate, presidential signature or veto; two-thirds of both chambers can override a veto.

First Amendment protects speech, press, religion (establishment and free exercise), assembly, and petition; Fourth covers searches and seizures; Fifth covers self-incrimination and due process.

Electoral College: 538 electors; 270 needed to win; states generally use winner-take-all; the House decides the presidency if no candidate reaches a majority.

Federalism powers: enumerated (Article I, Section 8), implied (necessary and proper clause), reserved (Tenth Amendment), and concurrent (taxation, roads).

Senate cloture requires 60 votes; the House Rules Committee sets debate terms; gerrymandering shapes district boundaries.

Political science concepts: political socialization, interest groups, realignment versus dealignment, median voter theorem, and unitary versus federal systems.

Five themes: location (absolute and relative), place, human-environment interaction, movement, and region.

Latitude lines run parallel to the equator (0°); longitude meridians converge at the poles; the prime meridian is 0° and the International Date Line is near 180°.

Köppen climate groups: A tropical, B dry, C temperate, D continental, E polar.

Plate boundaries: divergent (spreading), convergent (subduction or collision), and transform (lateral sliding); they produce earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain belts.

Demographic transition: Stage 1 high birth and death rates; Stage 2 death rates fall and growth is rapid; Stage 3 birth rates fall; Stage 4 both low; Stage 5 possible population decline.

Push factors (war, famine, persecution) drive emigration; pull factors (jobs, safety, services) attract immigration; intervening obstacles affect migration flows.

Map projections: Mercator preserves direction but exaggerates high-latitude area; Robinson and Winkel Tripel compromise between shape and area.

Development measures: GDP per capita, literacy rate, life expectancy, and the Human Development Index (health, education, income); core-periphery patterns describe uneven development.

Scarcity forces choices; opportunity cost is the value of the next-best alternative forgone.

Law of demand: price up, quantity demanded down; law of supply: price up, quantity supplied up; equilibrium occurs where the curves intersect.

Price elasticity of demand = percentage change in quantity demanded ÷ percentage change in price; elastic if |E| > 1, inelastic if |E| < 1.

GDP = C + I + G + (X − M); real GDP adjusts for inflation using a price index, while nominal GDP does not.

Inflation is measured by the CPI or GDP deflator; unemployment types are frictional, structural, and cyclical; full employment excludes cyclical unemployment.

Federal Reserve tools: open market operations, discount rate, and reserve requirements; the dual mandate is price stability and maximum employment.

Fiscal policy uses government spending and taxation; expansionary policy raises spending or cuts taxes, while contractionary policy does the opposite.

Comparative advantage: specialize where opportunity cost is lowest; absolute advantage means producing more output with the same resources.