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全文字数：1575字

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上期划线句答案

Companies including Marlboro maker Philip Morris International Inc.have contributed tothe shift in tobacco consumption, expanding into smoke-free nicotine alternatives as cigarette use declines.

包括万宝路（香烟）的制造商菲利普莫里斯国际在内的公司对烟草消费的转变做出了贡献，随着香烟使用量的下降，他们向无烟尼古丁替代品市场迈进。

expanding... 现在分词作伴随状语

本期内容

双语阅读

I have a confession to make: I hate big numbers. Or rather, I hate it when big numbers are used to impress orbamboozlerather than to make sense of the world. The annual Budget speech by the UK’s chancellor, for instance, always involves a dizzying parade of large price tags. This year’s included an extra £63mn to be spent on leisure centres, £5bn over two years for defence, £200mn forpotholesand £10mn over two years for suicide prevention, to name just a few.

我必须要承认：我讨厌很大的数字。或者换句话说，我讨厌把很大的数字用于震慑或迷惑人们，而不是用于解释这个世界。例如，英国财政大臣的年度预算演讲中总是会用到令人眼花缭乱的巨额数字标签。今年还包括花在休闲中心上的额外的6300万英镑费用，50亿英镑用于两年国防计划，2亿英镑用于填补路面坑洼，1000万英镑用于为期两年的自杀预防等等。

I’m not the first to worry about this. In a piece titled “On Number Numbness” in the 1980s, the scholar Douglas Hofstadter asked: “Are we growing ever number to ever-growing numbers?” He took asternapproach, saying there was “no excuse for not being able to understand — or even relate to — numbers whose purpose is to summarise in a few symbols some salient aspects of . . . huge realities”.

我不是第一个对此感到担心的人。在上世纪80年代一篇名为《论数字麻木》的文章中，学者道格拉斯·霍夫施塔特问道：“我们是从一个数字发展到不断增长的数字了吗?”他对此严厉表态，表示“没有借口不能理解数字——或不能与之联系起来，数字的目的是用几个符号概括宏大现实……的一些突出方面。"

He was perhaps a little harsh. As neuroscientists Lindsey Hasak and Elizabeth Toomarian have put it, “the human brain just isn’t built to comprehend such large numbers”. In one research study, many participants placed a million approximately halfway between 1,000 and a billion on a number line. Even people who know better can struggle to really conceptualise just how vast the difference between a million and a billion is.

他这样可能有点苛刻了。正如神经科学家林赛·哈萨克和伊丽莎白·图马里安说的，“人类的大脑天生无法理解如此庞大的数字”。翻译划线句，长按文末小程序码打卡，答案下期公布~

Who benefits when thepublic discourseis polluted with big numbers that many struggle to understand? Politicians often drop them into interviews or announcements in the hope they will sound significant to journalists or the public, even if they are actually quitepaltrysums in context. Businesses and lobby groups sometimes do the same.

当公共对话被很多人难以理解的巨大的数字污染时，谁会从中受益？政客们经常在采访或公告中加入这种大数字，希望让它们在记者或公众听来意义重大，即使它们在上下文中实际上是相当没价值的数字。企业和游说团体有时也会这么做。

There is no reason to submit helplessly to this guff. One strategy is to make big numbers smaller so they become more meaningful to the public and easier to compare. A study published last year found that non-experts were better able to discriminate between the price tags of different government programmes when the numbers were divided by the size of the population to give amounts per head. The researchers concluded this “relatively simple change to how information is presentedamelioratesmisunderstandings, thereby improving the potential for participatory democracy”.

没必要对这种胡言乱语感到束手无策。应对方法之一是让大的数字变小，使其对公众更有意义，更容易进行比较。去年发表的一项研究发现，当用总数除以人口规模得出人均数字时，非专家人士能够更好地分辨不同政府项目的标价。研究人员总结道，这种“对信息呈现方式进行相对简单的改变，就可以减轻误解，从而让参与式民主有了更大的空间”。

本文节选自：Financial Times（金融时报）

发布时间：2023.05.02

作者：International homepage

原文标题：People are numb to big numbers

词汇积累

1.bamboozle

/bæmˈbuːzəl/

vt.欺骗；使迷惑

2. pothole

/ˈpɒtˌhəʊl/

n.壶穴

vi.探索洞穴

3. stern

/stɜːn/

adj. (人或其态度)严厉的，认真的; (工作等)严峻的，棘手的; 不屈从的，不动摇的

n. 船尾，艉部

4. paltry

/ˈpɔːltrɪ/

adj.不足取的；无价值的；琐碎的；卑鄙的

5.ameliorate

/əˈmiːljəˌreɪt/

v. <正式>改善，改良，减轻; 变得更好

词组搭配

1.public discourse 公共话语

写作句总结

There is no reason to submit helplessly to this guff.

结构：There is no reason to submit helplessly to ….

没必要对这种…感到束手无策。

例句：There is no reason to submit helplessly to the phenomenon of catching at shadow.

阅读理解题

What is the author's main attitude towards the use of big numbers in public discourse?

A. Big numbers are necessary to make sense of the world.

B. Politicians and businesses should continue to use big numbers to impress the public.

C. The complexity of big numbers makes them difficult for people to understand.

D. Big numbers should be presented in a way that makes them more meaningful to the public.

D. A、C项有提到，但非核心重要观点；B项态度不正确

打卡作业

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（戳码回复“J88”）

• END •

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