English Language Arts: Visual Features (TEKS.ELA.9-12.9.C)
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Texas High School ELA › English Language Arts: Visual Features (TEKS.ELA.9-12.9.C)
From a historical analysis of the 1900 hurricane in Texas: The author argues that the disaster's human toll escalated not only from wind and surge but from a cascading information failure. A parallel-lane timeline runs across two pages: the top lane traces meteorological events (storm genesis, strengthening, landfall, surge peaks) with small icons; the middle lane tracks city actions (warnings issued, train schedules altered, evacuation orders); the bottom lane charts communication capacity (telegraph relays, lines down, message backlog), with line thickness thinning as capacity collapses. Analytical photo captions accompany archival images; one caption points out, in a panoramic street scene, the radial orientation of debris consistent with late-stage onshore flow, tying it to the surge peak marker on the timeline.
Which statement best explains how the parallel-lane timeline supports the author's claim about cascading information failure?
It shows when the storm began and ended along with some pictures of damage.
It makes the page look more professional by organizing dates with icons and photos.
It proves that meteorologists could predict every phase of the storm with precision.
By synchronizing meteorology, municipal actions, and communication capacity, it visually exposes the widening lag between hazard signals and civic response as telegraph bandwidth collapses, thereby substantiating the claim that information bottlenecks amplified risk.
Explanation
The timeline's coordinated lanes reveal misalignment between unfolding hazards and decision-making as communications fail, directly supporting the argument about information bottlenecks. The other options either describe content superficially or misstate the analysis.
From a technical briefing on wind integration and the Texas grid: The text contends that reducing total system losses requires prioritizing the largest conversion and delivery inefficiencies, not only optimizing wind farm layouts. A Sankey diagram depicts energy flows within the ERCOT system from primary energy inputs to delivered end-use, with band widths proportional to flow magnitude and pale, tapered bands representing losses at thermal conversion, step-up/down transformation, and long-distance transmission. A separate professional diagram shows turbine wake interactions in a multi-row array and quantifies velocity deficits downwind, emphasizing local layout effects but comparatively smaller system-wide impact. The caption explicitly invites readers to compare the thickness of the loss bands in the Sankey to the wake-loss estimate in the farm diagram.
How does the Sankey diagram function to reinforce the author's prioritization argument?
By encoding losses as wide, pale bands at key conversion and delivery stages, it foregrounds where the largest inefficiencies occur, steering readers to the same high-impact targets the text advocates, unlike the turbine-wake schematic which illustrates a localized effect.
It shows that the grid contains many parts and uses different kinds of energy sources.
It decorates the report with flowing shapes that keep readers engaged during technical sections.
It proves that wind farms never contribute meaningfully to overall efficiency improvements.
Explanation
The Sankey's width-proportional bands make loss magnitude immediately comparable, highlighting the biggest inefficiencies and aligning with the author's call to prioritize those areas. The other choices either merely describe, treat the graphic as decorative, or draw an unsupported conclusion.
From an educational policy report on Texas postsecondary attainment: The author argues that focusing on statewide averages conceals widening disparities across community types even as overall completion rises. Figure 4 pairs county-level small-multiple maps for 2000 and 2020 (each map a grid of mini-choropleths, consistent legend) with violin plots comparing completion rate distributions for rural, suburban, and urban counties in both years. The violins reveal thicker tails and greater spread for rural counties by 2020, while the small multiples show emergent clusters of high-attainment counties along the I-35 corridor.
How do the violin plots, in combination with the small-multiple maps, support the report's central claim?
They show Texas has rural, suburban, and urban counties and that maps can look different in different years.
They make the figure more visually interesting by adding shapes and multiple panels.
By displaying within-category distribution breadth (not just means) and tethering those shifts to geography, they demonstrate that disparities widened—especially in rural counties—even as the statewide average rose, clarifying where and how inequity expanded.
They prove that all rural counties declined while all urban counties improved.
Explanation
The violin plots convey distributional changes within each category, and the small multiples locate these changes geographically, directly supporting the claim about widening disparities beyond an improving average. The distractors are descriptive, decorative, or overgeneralized.