TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you're given a question, along with three passages, 1, 2, and 3. Your job is to determine which passage can be used to answer the question by searching for further information using terms from the passage. Indicate your choice as 1, 2, or 3.
PROBLEM: Question: Near what Kentucky city did Beck serve in the Field Artillery? Passage 1:Beck was born in the village of Timmersdala, Sweden as one of seven children born to Carl Melcher and Anna Helena (Jonson) Back. His father was a member of the Swedish military and the owner and operator of a lime kiln. In March 1906, at the age of 11, Beck immigrated to the United States arriving in South Dakota in the middle of April 1906. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States of May 17, 1913. He received an Artium Baccalaureus degree from Morningside College in 1920. He received a Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School in 1922. During World War I, he was a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army. He served in the Field Artillery at Camp Zachary Taylor, Kentucky, where it appears he was a junior officer of the 4th Company Convalescent Center.
 Passage 2:Joseph Daniel Brookhart (born October 17, 1964) is an American football coach and former player. He was most recently an assistant coach at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he was hired as passing game coordinator, tight ends coach, and special teams coordinator on Jon Embree's staff in December 2010. Brookhart was the head coach at the University of Akron from 2004 to 2009, compiling a record of 30–42. His Akron Zips won the Mid-American Conference (MAC) in 2005, and he was honored as the MAC Coach of the Year the previous season. Brookhart played college football at Brigham Young University as a freshman walk-on before transferring to Colorado State University. He has also served as an assistant coach at the University of Pittsburgh and with the Denver Broncos of the National Football League (NFL).
 Passage 3:In 1917 he volunteered to become a sailor the Imperial German Navy during World War I and on 3 November 1918 was part of the Kiel mutiny. At the end of the first world war he joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In 1920, he became a communist and joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In 1921 he was promoted to a KPD party functionary, an Ortsgruppenleiter for the town of Ahlen.During the same year, Küchenmeister started work as an editor on the Westphalian Arbeiterzeitung (Workers Party), that was considered one of the most radical social-democractic newspapers in Germany. He also edited the communist newspaper, the Ruhr Echo in Essen, a position he held until 1926. In 1926 he was expelled from the KPD for non-proletarian behaviour and was suspected of being a police informer and embezzeler and this stigmatized his position as an orthodox communist, making him seen by his peer group as a traitor and ex-comrade. To earn a living he became an advertiser and freelance writer. In the six years that followed he wrote a biography of the German preacher and radical theologian Thomas Müntzer and the German sculptor and woodcarver Tilman Riemenschneider.


SOLUTION: 1

PROBLEM: Question: How tall is the mountain range where the Snoqualmie and Skykomish Rivers originate? Passage 1:The Snohomish River forms at the confluence of the Snoqualmie and Skykomish Rivers just west of Monroe. Both of these rivers originate in the Cascades and drain the west slopes of the mountains in southeastern Snohomish County and northeastern King County. The Snohomish River flows generally northwestward from the confluence, passing under state route 522 and flowing alongside Lord Hill Park before reaching downtown Snohomish. Here, it is joined by the Pilchuck River, its main tributary, and flows under state route 9. From Snohomish, the river continues northwestward through a broad floodplain, forming the eastern boundary of the city of Everett. The final few miles of the river in Everett form the Snohomish River estuary, a river delta that features wetlands and tideflats spread out across various islands and arms of the river. Several bridges carry U.S. 2, Interstate 5, and state route 529 across the delta. The river then empties into Possession Sound, which is part of Puget Sound, between Everett and Marysville.
 Passage 2:Cameron began as an office dogsbody with the Weekly News in 1935. Having worked for several Scottish newspapers and for the Daily Express in Fleet Street, he was rejected for military service in World War II. After the war, his experience of reporting on the Bikini Atoll nuclear experiments turned him into a pacifist and a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He continued to work for the Express until 1950, after which he briefly joined Picture Post, where he and photographer Bert Hardy covered the Korean War, winning the Missouri Pictures of the Year International Award for "Inchon". Tom Hopkinson, the editor of Picture Post, lost his job as publisher when he defended the magazine's coverage of atrocities committed by South Korean troops at a concentration camp in Pusan. Cameron wrote, "I had seen Belsen, but this was worse. This terrible mob of men - convicted of nothing, un-tried, South Koreans in South Korea, suspected of being 'unreliable'." The founder of the Hulton press, Edward G. Hulton, decided to "kill" the story.
 Passage 3:Raised in Bowie, Maryland, Nichols graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1979. From 1989 to 1991, he was stationed at Torrejón Air Base in Spain and served in the Gulf War before being assigned to The Pentagon. In 1992, Nichols joined the Wisconsin Air National Guard and was assigned to the 128th Fighter Wing. From 1994 to 1998, he served as Operations Officer of the 176th Fighter Squadron before serving as an operations group commander at Truax Field Air National Guard Base in Madison, Wisconsin for two years. In 2000, he was named Vice Commander of the 149th Fighter Wing of the Texas Air National Guard. From 2003 until 2009, he was in command of the 149th Fighter Wing. He was named Assistant Adjutant General of the Texas Air National Guard in 2009 and stayed in that position until becoming Adjutant General of Texas in 2011.


SOLUTION: 1

PROBLEM: Question: Which battle Nelson served in lasted longer, the Siege of Veracruz or the second Tabasco Expedition? Passage 1:Marques del Duero was the oldest member of Rear Admiral Patricio Montojo de Pasaron's Pacific Squadron at Manila in the Philippine Islands when the Spanish–American War broke out in April 1898. She was anchored with the squadron in Cañacao Bay under the lee of the Cavite Peninsula east of Sangley Point, Luzon, eight miles southwest of Manila, when, early on the morning of 1 May 1898, the United States Navy's Asiatic Squadron under Commodore George Dewey, found Montojo's anchorage and attacked. In the resulting Battle of Manila Bay, the first major engagement of the Spanish–American War, Marques del Duero took one , one , and about three other shell hits, which wrecked her bow gun, a side gun, and an engine. Her crew scuttled her in shallow water; part of her upper works remained above water, and a boarding crew from the gunboat went aboard and set these on fire at the end of battle.
 Passage 2:William Nelson was the third and youngest son of Dr. Thomas W. Nelson (1796–1849) and Frances Doniphan (1795–1845) of Maysville, Kentucky. He attended Maysville Academy (Seminary) and was enrolled in Norwich University at age thirteen. Two years later, Nelson's preparatory training at the Vermont military school concluded when Congressman Garrett Davis secured an appointment for him to become a midshipman in the United States Navy. In the spring of 1840, Nelson reported for training aboard the . For the next five years he sailed the South Pacific under the leadership of harsh, overbearing, and insensitive brutes. Nelson then joined the first class to attend the newly established Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. On July 11, 1846 Nelson became a passed midshipman and the following October, he reported for duty aboard the , the flagship for the Home Squadron in the Gulf of Mexico. At the Siege of Veracruz, he served with Naval Battery No. 5, and on the second Tabasco Expedition, Nelson was a member of the Second Artillery Division. In February 1848, he became acting master of the . At the conclusion of his service, Nelson received a sword for heroism and proficiency as an artillerist. In the summer of 1849, he joined the Mediterranean Squadron, and on September 1, 1851, he was acting lieutenant of the when exiled Hungarian revolutionary Louis Kossuth boarded the vessel to come to the United States. In December, Nelson became an escort for the Magyar's famous tour of the United States. On September 19, 1854 he was promoted to sailing master and the following April 18, 1855 achieved the rank of lieutenant. In September 1858, Nelson joined the for the mission of returning captured slaves to Monrovia, Liberia. Two years later, he was at the Washington Navy Yard as an ordnance officer.
 Passage 3:Bouguer, La Condamine, Godin and their colleagues measured arcs of the Earth's curvature on the Equator from the plains near Quito to the southern city of Cuenca. These measurements enabled the first accurate determination of the shape of the Earth, eventually leading to the establishment of the international metric system of measurement. When an International Commission for Weights and Measures was convened in Paris to settle the true length of the metre, it adopted on 22 June 1799 a standard metre based on the length of the half meridian connecting the North pole with the Equator. The French Academy of Sciences had commissioned an expedition led by Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre and Pierre Méchain, lasting from 1792 to 1799, which attempted to accurately measure the distance between a belfry in Dunkerque and Montjuïc castle in Barcelona at the longitude of Paris Panthéon. This portion of the Paris meridian was to serve as the basis for the length of the half meridian connecting the North Pole with the Equator. The metre was defined as the ten-millionth of the half meridian's length extrapolated from a Earth's flattening of 1/334 obtained from the results of the survey by Delambre and Méchain combined with those of the Peru meridian arc as established by La Condamine and his colleagues.


SOLUTION:
2