Tutor profile: Alan J.

There were 32 students in Mr. Hornby's classroom. All of the boys played on the monkey bars during recess, while half of the girls went to the swings, and the other half played on the slides. If there were 9 children playing on the swings, how many boys are in Mr. Hornby's class?

First, we see that we are given the numbers 9 and 32. 32 is the total number of kids in the class, so we know that whatever numbers we have, the equation will look like 32 - girls = boys. We also know that 9 is only half of the number of girls in class, so the operation we would use is multiplication to find the total number of girls. Since we are told we have half of the girls, we should double the number of girls to have all of them counted, so 9 x 2. 9 x 2 = 18, so now we can go back to our equation and replace "girls" with 18. Now the equation is 32 - 18 = boys. If we do the calculation, our answer would be 14. So there are 14 boys in Mr. Hornby's class.

What are some of the lasting effects of segregation against minorities in the United States?

There were essentially two types of segregation in the US up until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, institutional segregation and de facto segregation. institutional segregation was what was largely affected by the Civil Rights Act, making it much more difficult to discriminate in the workplace and in hiring on the basis of race. De facto segregation is segregation through means that are not official, and sometimes institutional and de facto segregation were more closely tied than people realized. One strong piece of evidence supporting this claim is the use of Red Lining for housing loans from financial institutions. This began as an institutional segregation tool that outlined areas in red where black prospective homeowners would be denied a mortgage simply to keep the neighborhoods free of their presence. When legislation was passed to stop discrimination such as this, the damage had already been done. The neighborhoods that were "red lined" were now largely white, and more affluent than the neighborhoods the black buyers settled in, so de facto racial segregation set in where institutional segregation laid the foundation. Many of the neighborhoods today remain segregated by race, often sowing mistrust and fear due to the lack of exposure to those who are different.

What are some of the reasons why European powers found themselves embroiled in the First World War?

While not all of the reasons possible, three of the leading causes of the Great War were nationalism, alliances, and a recent technological boom. Nationalism had been on the rise for decades before the outbreak of WWI due to the regularity of wartime in the decades before and the ongoing perception that war glorious. On top of that, the Napoleonic Wars were still in memories of European nations as a whole, so alliances that came about due to them, for the most part, were still in effect. Technology had also been experiencing constant developments, especially pertaining to weapons, so not only were peoples' minds "prepared" for war, but there was also much excitement about the use of these new weapons technologies like automatic weapons and airplanes.