综合教程 第五册 Unit 8 the art of smart guessing.doc

Unit 8 The Art of Smart Guessing Several years ago interviewing candidates for a job I grew tired of asking What experience do you have So I decided on a one-question quiz to find out how resourceful a thinker the new hire might be. Here it is: 几年前我厌倦问面试应聘者“你有什么经验”所以我决定用一个问题的测验来了解新员工有多么的足智多谋。那就是 You are on a yacht sailing the Pacific Ocean. Your navigator announces you are over the deepest point the Mariana Trench. Just then a clumsy guest accidentally drops a 12-pound cannonball over the side. How long will it take for the cannonball to reach the bottom of the ocean 你在一艘航行于太平洋的游艇上。你的导航仪显示你是在最深的地方马里亚纳海沟之上。就在那时一个笨拙的客人不小心将一枚12磅重的炮弹扔了下去。炮弹落到海底需要多长时间 Before reading on please try to solve this yourself-paying special attention to how you might solve it. 在继续阅读之前请设法自己解决这个问题特别注意你如何解决它。 Did you make a completely wild guess because there wasnt enough information Did you get too bogged down in the details trying to come up with the exactly right answer Or did you zero in on the two most important problems-how deep is the Mariana Trench and how fast might a cannonball fall through the water- then hazard a guesstimate 你是否因为“没有足够的信息”而做了一个完全的猜测你是否过于陷入细节试图找出“正确”答案还是你瞄准的两个最重要的问题马里亚纳海沟有多深和炮弹在水中以多块的速度落下然后大胆猜测 Most of my candidates simply made a wild guess thinking that if they couldnt be 100-percent right there was no use trying to be 95-percent right. Rarely was someone willing to risk an approximation. 我的大多数应聘者只是胡乱猜测想他们认为自己不可能100正确即使95正确也是没有用的。很少有人愿意大胆猜测。 What does this have to do with business or creativity A great deal. In the real world we frequently need to make decisions when the full information does not exist. From what foods we eat to how to raise our kids creative people must think for themselves. There may not be the time or the money to make sure of all your decisions. Your best guess will often be the best you can do. 这与商业或创造力有什么关系呢事实上有很多关系。在现实世界中我们经常需要在没有完整信息的情况下做出决定。从我们吃什么食物到如何培养自己的孩子有创造力的人必须独立思考。你可能没有时间或金钱来确保你所有的决定。最好的猜测常常会成为你最应该做的事情。 Suppose for example youve been asked to write a marketing plan for a new telephone device that will send your name company address and telephone number to a visual display or printer on another persons phone. In addition to conventional outlets like mass merchandisers and electronics stores youd like to know the number of phone stores in the United States. Unfortunately this figure is not available either from market-research houses or from the U.S. government. What do you do 打个比方假定你要为一个新的电话设备写一个营销计划这个设备会将您的大名、公司、地址、电话号码发送到别人的手机的显示器或打印机上。除了常规网点像大商场和电子卖场你还要了解美国“手机店”的数量。不幸的是这个数字无论是从市场研究机构或从美国政府 都不可能得到。你会怎么做 One solution would be to go to your local library pull out a few phone directories from around the country turn to the Yellow Pages and start counting. You could then guesstimate how many stores there were nationwide based on the number of stores per 100000 people in each of the cities you counted. This by the way is exactly what a marketing consultant I know did for a large telecommunications client. 一个解决办法是去您当地的图书馆拉出来自全国各地的几个电话目录打开黄页然后开始数。接着你就可以根据你所数的每个城市里每十万人会有多少家店来猜测全国有多少家店。 顺便说一下这是我知道的一个营销顾问为一个大型电信客户所做的市场调查的确切做法。 The question about phone stores was an example of what scientists call a Fermi problem named after Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi who used problems such as this to teach his students how to think for themselves. A Fermi problem does not contain all the information you need to solve it precisely. 手机店的问题是科学家所谓的费米问题的一个例子费米问题是由诺贝尔奖得主物理学家恩里科费米所命名他曾用这类问题来教他的学生独立思考。费米问题不包含所有你需要的信息但你必须准确地解决它。 Fermi is said to have once asked his university students how many piano tuners there were in Chicago. To answer the question he recommended breaking it down into smaller more manageable questions and then having the courage to make some guesses and assumptions. How many people live in Chicago Three million would be a reasonable estimate. How many people per family Assume an average of four. How many families own pianos Say one out of three. Then there are about 250000 pianos in Chicago. How often would each be tuned Maybe once every five years. That makes 50000 tunings a year. How many pianos can one tuner tune in a day Four And how many in a year Assuming 250 working days one tuner can handle 1000 pianos a year. 据说费米曾经问他的大学生芝加哥有多少个钢琴调音师。为了回答这个问题他建议吧问题打破分解成更小、更易于处理的问题然后勇敢地去做一些猜测和假设。芝加哥有多少人口三百万将是一个合理的估计。每个家庭有多少人假设平均有四口人。有多少家庭拥有钢琴呢三分之一吧。那么芝加哥大约就有25万架钢琴。每台钢琴多久需要调音一次也许是每隔五年。那每年就有五万次调音。一个调音师一天可以为几台钢琴调音四台一年内多少台假设一年有250个工作日一个调音师一年就可以为1000台钢琴调音。 So theres work for approximately 50 piano tuners in Chicago- which as it turns out is reasonably close to the actual number in the Yellow Pages. 因此芝加哥大约有50位钢琴调音师事实证明这个结果理所应当地接近黄页上的实际数据。 Why was guesswork so accurate The law of averages is partly responsible. At any point your assumptions may be too high or too low. But because of the law of averages your mistakes will frequently balance out. 为什么猜测可以如此的精确有一部分原因是因为平均数定律。在任何时候你的假设可能会过高或过低。但由于平均数定律你的失误往往会得到平衡。 Heres another puzzle. You probably already know that black absorbs the most heat while white reflects the most. But what about other colors in between How could you find the answer Hint: its wintertime but not too cold. 还有一个疑问。你可能已经知道黑吸收最多的热量而白色反射了大多数热量。但在黑白之间的其他颜色呢你如何能找到答案提示:冬天但不太冷的时候。 Ben Franklins solution was elegant. He simply laid broadcloth samples of various colors on the snow on a sunny morning. In a few hours he reported the black being warmed most by the sun was sunk so low as to be below the stroke of the suns rays the dark blue almost as low the lighter blue not quite so much as the dark the other colors less as they were lighter and the quite white remained on the surface of the snow not having entered it at all. 本富兰克林的办法非常优雅。一个阳光明媚的早晨他只是在雪地上铺设了各种不同颜色的阔幅布样品。他说“几小时的日晒后在太阳辐射的照射下黑色的布将变得最温暖黑布陷进雪地里如此之低以至于阳光都照射不到了深蓝色的几乎与黑色一样低低浅蓝色就不像深蓝陷得那么深了其他颜色的陷得更浅白色的仍然留在雪地的表面根本没有陷入进去。” One of my favorite guesstimators is Weston Conn. inventor Stan Mason who developed microwave cookware specially designed to position food in the best spot for cooking. 我最喜欢的一个“猜想家”是Weston Conn.的发明家斯坦梅森他改进了微波炊具特殊设计了最佳烹调的食物放置位置。 To do this Mason needed to know where the microwaves hot spots” were - the place where the rays hit the food with the highest intensity. To find out he put shelves of unpopped popcorn kernels in the microwave and watched to see which kernels popped first. He discovered a pattern in the ovens hottest rays: they werent in the corners or at the center but in the shape of a mushroom cloud. 要做到这一点梅森需要知道微波热点”在哪那儿的食物受到最高强度强度的微波照射。为了找出真相他把几层架子的未爆裂的爆米花谷粒放入微波炉中观察看哪个谷粒首先爆裂。突然他发现了微波炉最热射线的一个模式最热门的射线既不是在角落里也不在中心而是在蘑菇云的形状里。 Then he designed cooking dishes to fit the pattern. He had come up with a resourceful way to approximate the answer rather than using scientifically sophisticated testing equipment. 然后他设计烹饪菜肴来适应这个模式。他已经想出一个创意十足的方法来接近答案而不是利用科学精密的检测设备。 Fermi would have approved. 如果费米知道的话他也会为之鼓掌的。 By the way the Mariana Trench is about six nautical miles deep and a cannonball drops at a rate of ten feet per second. So it took the cannonball about an hour to reach the bottom of the trench. 话说马里亚纳海沟深约六海里炮弹下降速率为10英尺/秒。因此炮弹大约要花一个小时的时间到达海沟底部。 Could this be guessed If you know that Earths highest point Mount Everest is 29000 feet you might reasonably conclude that its lowest point would be close to the same distance. Then you might imagine that a heavy object would take one second to fall through the water of a 10-foot-deep swimming pool. These estimates would bring you close enough to the correct answer. 这都否被猜到如果你知道地球最高峰的珠穆朗玛峰海拔29000英尺你可能会得出合理的结论:最低点也是同样的距离。然后你可以想象一个重物掉进一个10英尺深的游泳池只需要1秒钟到底。这些估算足够让你去接近正确答案。 Unit 12 The New Immorality The provost of one of our largest and honored institutions told me not long ago that a questionnaire was distributed to his undergraduates and 40 percent refused to acknowledge that they believed cheating on examinations to be reprehensible. 不久前，美国一所规模宏大、声名显赫的大学的教务长告诉我说，他们学校对本科生作了一次问卷调查，结果百分之四十的人并不认为考试作弊有什么可非议的。 Recently a reporter for a New York newspaper stopped 6 people on the street and asked them if they would consent to take part in a rigged television quiz for money. He reported that 5 of the 6 said yes. Yet most of these 5, like most of the college cheaters, would probably profess a strong social consciousness. They may cheat, but they vote for foreign aid and for enlightened social measures. 最近，纽约一家报纸的记者在大街上采访了六个人，问他们如果给予报酬，愿不愿意参加弄虚作假的电视知识竞赛。这位记者报道说，六个人中有五个人回答说愿意。然而，这五人中的大多数，就像大多数考试作弊的大学生一样，很可能会声称自己有着强烈的社会意识。他们尽管会作弊，但是又会支持对外援助，支持开明的社会举措。 These two examples exhibit a paradox of our age. It is often said, and my observation leads me to believe it is true, that our seemingly great growth in social morality has oddly enough taken place in a world where private morality- a sense of the supreme importance of purely personal honor, honesty, and integrity- seems to be declining. Beneficent and benevolent social institutions are administered by men who all too frequently turn out to be accepting “gifts”. The world of popular entertainment is rocked by scandal. College students, put on their honor, cheat on examination. Candidates for the Ph. D. hire ghostwriters to prepare their theses. 这两个事例揭示了我们时代的一个怪诞现象。人们常说，而我的所见所闻使我也对此深信不疑：我们的社会道德似乎有了长足的进步，而令人奇怪的是，就在我们这个社会里，个人道德观念-即把个人荣誉、正直和诚实视为至高无上的观念-却似乎正在沉沦。慈善机构的管理者往往是些收受“礼物”的人。大众娱乐界经常被丑闻搅得惊魂不定。大学生表面上很体面，考试却要作弊。博士生雇人代写论文。 But, one may object, havent all these things always been true? Is there really any evidence that personal dishonesty is more prevalent than it always was? 然而，有人会提出异议：这些现象难道不是由来已久吗？难道真有什么证据，证明个人的舞弊行为比以往更加盛行吗？ I have no way of making a historical measurement. Perhaps these things are not actually more prevalent. What I do know is that there is an interesting tendency to accept and take for granted such personal dishonesty. The bureaucrat and disk jockey say, “Well, yes, I took presents, but I assure you that I made just decision anyway.” The college student caught cheating does not even blush. He shrugs his shoulders and comments:” Everybody does it, and besides, I cant see that it really hurts anybody.” 我无法作出今昔对比。也许，这些现象目前其实并非更加普遍。可我确实知道，如今人们越来越趋向于接受这种个人舞弊行为，甚至认为是理所当然的事。官员和节目主持人会说：“不错，我是接受礼物了，不过我可以向你们担保，我所做的决定怎么说也是公正的。”大学生考试作弊被发现，连脸都不红，而只是耸耸肩，振振有词地说：“大家都是这么干的。再说，我看这实在不会损害任何人。” Jonathan Swift once said: “I have never been surprised to find men wicked, but I have often been surprised to find them not ashamed.” It is my conviction that though men may be no more wicked than they always have been, they seem less likely to be ashamed. if everybody does it, it must be right. Honest, moral, decent mean only what is usual. This is not really a wicked world, because morality means mores or manners and usual conduct is the only standard. Jonathan Swift曾说过：“我从未因为发现人们不讲道德而感到惊讶，但我常常因为发现人们不知羞耻而感到惊愕。”我相信，人们虽然未必比以前还要不讲道德，但似乎要比以前更加不知羞耻。只要人人这么做，这事就一定是正当的。所谓的诚实、道德、体面，只要随波逐流就行。其实，这还算不上是一个道德沦丧的世界，因为道德就意味着习俗和常规，行为是否合乎常规，这是惟一的标准。 The second part of the defense, “it really doesnt hurt anybody,” is equally revealing. “It doesnt hurt anybody” means it doesnt do that abstraction called society any harm. The harm it did to the bribe-taker and the cheater isnt important; it is purely personal, as opposed to social decency, doesnt count for much. Sometimes I am inclined to blame sociology for part of this paradox. Sociology has tended to lay exclusive stress upon social morality, and tended too often to define good and evil as merely the “socially useful or its reverse. 那个辩解的后半部分所说的“实在不会损害任何人”，同样发人深思。“不会损害任何人”，意思是说不会对社会这个抽象概念带来损害。对受贿者和舞弊者的危害是无关紧要的，那纯属个人的事。与社会文明相比，个人的德行是无足轻重的。有时候，我觉得社会学应对这一怪诞现象承担部分责任。社会学往往只注重社会道德，并往往只根据是否“对社会有益”，来界定善与恶。 What social morality and social conscience leave out is the narrower but very significant concept of honor-as opposed to what is sometimes called merely “socially desirable conduct”. The man of honor is not content to ask merely whether this or that will hurt society, or whether it is what most people would permit themselves to do. He asks, and he asks first of all, would it hurt him and his self-respect? Would it dishonor him personally? 社会道德和社会良知忽略了那个比较狭隘而又十分重要的荣誉观念-这是与有时被简单称作“为社会所认同的行为”相对而言的。讲究体面的人不会只扪心自问如此这般是否危害社会，或者大多数人是否肯这样做。他会问，而且首先会问：这样做是否会损害他自己，损害他的自尊？这样做是否会使他个人为之丢脸？ It was a favorite and no doubt sound argument among early twentieth-century reformers that “playing the game” as the gentleman was supposed to play it was not enough to make a decent society. They were right, it is not enough. But the time has come to add that it is indeed inevitable that the so-called social conscience unsupported by the concept of personal honor will create a corrupt society. But suppose that it doesnt? Suppose that no one except the individual suffers from the fact that he sees nothing wrong in doing what everybody else does? Even so, I still insist that for the individual himself nothing is more important than this personal, interior sense of right and wrong and his determination to follow that rather than to be guided by what everybody does or merely the criterion of “social usefulness”. It is impossible for me to imagine a good society composed of men without honor. 20世纪初的改革家们特别喜欢一个无疑很有力的论点：像绅士那样“规规矩矩地做人”，还不足以造就一个文明的社会。他们说得对：那的确还不够。不过，现在还应该补充一句：所谓的社会良知，如果没有个人的荣誉感作支撑，势必会引起社会的堕落。但是，假如没有造成这种局面呢？假如有人认为随波逐流没有什么不妥，结果受损害的只是他本人而不是别人呢？即便如此，我仍然坚持认为，对个人而言，最重要的莫过于这种植根于个人心灵深处的是非感，以及坚决按这种是非感行事的决心，而不是随波逐流，或仅仅以是否“对社会有益”为准则。我无法想象，丧失体面的人怎么能组成一个文明的社会