A Transcontinental Railroad Was Not Built Before the Civil War

question 21

Multiple Choice

A transcontinental railroad was not built before the Civil War because:

• A) the Appalachian Mountains presented great engineering problems
• B) Congress refused to consider federal subsidies for a private railroad
• C) the technologies for building long tunnels through the Rockies did not exist
• D) many southern states used the states' rights argument to reject federal aid for railroads
• E) North-South sectional differences prevented Congress from selecting a route

---

Definitions:

Solver

A computational tool or software that finds solutions to mathematical problems or optimizes operational models.

Alpha

In finance, alpha is the measure of the active return on an investment compared to a market index used as a benchmark.

Solver

A mathematical tool used to find the optimal solution to a problem by iteratively testing possible solutions.

Exponential Smoothing

A statistical technique for forecasting where recent observations are given progressively higher weights, reducing the importance of older data.