大学英语四级阅读题文章精读(7)
大学英语四级阅读理解题文章精选－8
Passage Seven
Forecasting of Statistics
Nearly two thousand years have passed since a census decreed by Caesar Augustus become part of the greatest story ever told. Many things have changed in the intervening years. The hotel industry worries more about overbuilding than overcrowding, and if they had to meet an unexpected influx, few inns would have a manager to accommodate the weary guests. Now it is the census taker that does the traveling in the fond hope that a highly mobile population will stay long enough to get a good sampling. Methods of gathering, recording, and evaluating information have presumably been improved a great deal. And where then it was the modest purpose of Rome to obtain a simple head count as an adequate basis for levying taxes, now batteries of complicated statistical series furnished by governmental agencies and private organizations are eagerly scanned and interpreted by sages and seers to get a clue to future events. The Bible does not tell us how the Roman census takers made out, and as regards our more immediate concern, the reliability of present day economic forecasting, there are considerable differences of opinion. They were aired at the celebration of the 125th anniversary of the American Statistical Association. There was the thought that business forecasting might well be on its way from an art to a science, and some speakers talked about newfangled computers and high-falutin mathematical system in terms of excitement and endearment which we, at least in our younger years when these things mattered, would have associated more readily with the description of a fair maiden. But others pointed to the deplorable record of highly esteemed forecasts and forecasters with a batting average below that of the Mets, and the President-elect of the Association cautioned that “high powered statistical methods are usually in order where the facts are crude and inadequate, the exact contrary of what crude and inadequate statisticians assume.” We left his birthday party somewhere between hope and despair and with the conviction, not really newly acquired, that proper statistical methods applied to ascertainable facts have their merits in economic forecasting as long as neither forecaster nor public is deluded into mistaking the delineation of probabilities and trends for a prediction of certainties of mathematical exactitude.
1. Taxation in Roman days apparently was based on
[A]. wealth. [B]. mobility. [C]. population. [D]. census takers.
2. The American Statistical Association
[A]. is converting statistical study from an art to a science.
[B]. has an excellent record in business forecasting.
[C]. is neither hopeful nor pessimistic.
[D]. speaks with mathematical exactitude.
3. The message the author wishes the reader to get is
[A]. statisticians have not advanced since the days of the Roman.
[B]. statistics is not as yet a science.
[C]. statisticians love their machine.
[D].computer is hopeful.
4. The “greatest story ever told” referred to in the passage is the story of
[A]. Christmas. [B]. The Mets.
[C]. Moses. [D]. Roman Census Takers.
Vocabulary
1. census 人口调查
2. decreed 分布法令
3. influx 汇集，流入（人口或物）
4. census taker 人口调查员
5. in the intervening years 在这期间
6. sampling 取样（调查）
7. presumable 可能的，可推测的
8. batteries 一连串，一系列
9. sage 圣人;聪明的（人—）
10. seer 先知
11. newfangled 新型的（贬义）
12. high-falutin 夸大的，夸张的
13. deplorable 悲惨的，杂乱的
14. batting average 平均成功率（原指击球平均得分数）
15. ascertainable 可以确定的/确切的
16. delineation 描述
17. exactitude 精确
难句译注
1. The hotel industry worries more about overbuilding than overcrowding, and if they had to meet an unexpected influx, few inns would have a manager to accommodate the weary guests.
[结构简析] 复合句。And后为虚拟条件句。
[参考译文] 旅馆业就忧虑旅馆建的太多，不愁人太多。但是如果他们不得不碰到意想不到大批旅客，没有什么旅馆会有一位经理去安排疲惫不堪的客人的食宿。
写作方法与文章大意
文章论及“统计数字预测经济”。采用对比论证手法，还带点讽刺口吻，但气势宏伟。从两千年前恺撒?奥古斯都下令进行的人口调查说起，讲到现在的统计数字预测经济情况。得出应当正确对待预测数字的结论。