Teacher:In this task, you're given a question, a context passage, and four options which are terms from the passage. After reading a passage, you will get a brief understanding of the terms. Your job is to determine by searching and reading further information of which term you can answer the question. Indicate your choice as 'a', 'b', 'c', or 'd'. If you think more than one option is plausible, choose the more probable option to help you answer the question.
Teacher: Now, understand the problem? Solve this instance: Question: How many years was Taft president? Passage:Howard was born to Ossian Gregory Howard, a lawyer, and Lucy Denham Thurber on 11 June 1857. His relatives from his mother's side included the Harvard astronomer E.C. Pickering while other distant relatives included Senator J.M. Howard and President William Howard Taft. Shortly after his birth, the family moved from Rockford, to Ithaca, New York where his father worked with a law firm. Howard attended Ithaca Academy. An interest in insect collecting encouraged by his parents with the gift of The Butterfly Hunters by Mary Treat at the age of 10 followed by more books and at the age of 13, along with another collector friend, recorded the introduction of the European cabbage butterfly (Pieris rapae) in the Catskill region. Along with his friends, he founded the Ithaca Natural History Society to meet and discuss papers and insects. While out collecting one day, he met John Henry Comstock, who invited him to his lab at Cornell University. Howard enrolled in Cornell in September 1873, three years after the death of his father, and following the advice of his mother's friends, went to study civil engineering. Doing poorly in differential calculus made him drop engineering and he began to study other subjects including French, German, and Italian. He then joined Comstock's lab as the first research student and graduated in June 1877 with a thesis on respiration in the larva of Corydalis cornutus. He worked with Burt Green Wilder and Simon Henry Gage and received a masters at Cornell. In the 1880s, he also attended Columbian College (now George Washington University) for medicine, although he didn't complete it. He however received an honorary MD from the same university in 1911 for his contribution to medical entomology.
Links: a. William Howard Taft b. Rockford, Illinois c. John Henry Comstock d. Pieris rapae
Student:
a