经济预测，欲望永不眠 - FT速读测试

速读测试：经济预测，欲望永不眠

辞旧迎新的时候，人们为何总期望经济学家做预测呢？预测成绩怎样？这是FT"卧底经济学家"蒂姆·哈福德有趣的解答。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：
insatiable	贪得无厌的；不知足的
impunity	不受惩罚，免责
dissenter	持异见者
“25 standard deviation”	高盛公司的首席财务官大卫·维尼亚在2007年8月对FT说，他的员工看到市场上出现了“好几天25个标准差”的现象。伦敦商学院教授丹尼尔森估测高盛公司已经好几天遭到了史无前例的惨重损失。这大概每多少年才出现一次呢？文章中给出了数字。
bloviation	长篇大论
psephology	选举学
Exhibit A	【法律】证据甲(当庭首先出示的或主要的证据，也指重要的人证或物证)

常见问题

阅读FT对你有什么好处？

对于全球的商业精英来说，阅读英国《金融时报》是每天必须进行的修炼。《金融时报》的文章以分析见长，逻辑严密，特别适合准备GRE和GMAT的考生。培生集团推出的PTE考试的阅读题，就是利用了FT的文章来做阅读理解。

阅读速度多快才够用？

在信息爆炸的今天，能够迅速地阅读和理解大量资料，已成为所有人必不可少的技能。对于准备参加各种英语测试的考生来讲，阅读速度可能是决定成绩的关键。要想在GRE和GMAT的考试中拿到高分，你的阅读速度至少要达到每分钟200字。

如何迫使自己提高阅读速度?

我们有一个自动滚屏的工具来帮助你提高速度。点击该按钮后，屏幕就开始滚动，迫使你改掉向回看的习惯，加快速度。默认为每分钟140字（朗读速度）。随着你的技能提升，你可以挑战更高的速度，直到达到1000。

小字速度：+ -

阅读以下文章

An insatiable desire to peer into the future

The wonderful thing about forecasts is that they all sound very profound
--------------------------
It’s that time of year again. Time for you to make your predictions for 2013.
You’re kidding, right? You’re asking an economist for predictions?
Just my little joke. But surely you’re not a proper economist if you can’t make a few predictions. Isn’t that the whole point of the economic profession – to make dozens of mutually contradictory forecasts with impunity?
Well, the impunity is a topic worth discussing. But the economics profession could do with a few more disagreements, I think. In 1995, FT columnist John Kay examined the record of British economic forecasters from 1987 to 1994. He discovered that they tended to all say much the same thing. The only dissenter was reality: economic growth often fell outside the range of all 34 forecasts.

So economists are terrible forecasters. What else is new?
It isn’t just economists who are terrible forecasters. Take the quantitative analysts responsible for Goldman Sachs’s notorious “25 standard deviation” episode – presumably physicists or mathematicians.
25 standard deviation?
At the beginning of the financial crisis, the chief financial officer of Goldman Sachs explained that the firm was seeing “25 standard deviation moves, several days in a row” – a statement that, translated into English, means “according to our models, what we’re seeing is very unlucky”.
How unlucky?
Oh, the sort of bad luck you see once every 28, 900, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000 years, given certain assumptions about what Goldman might have meant. For reference the universe is about 14,000,000,000 years old. The alternative to the “very unlucky” hypothesis, of course, is that the quantitative models didn’t produce very good forecasts.
Well, that’s a forecast so bad that I can’t believe an economist wasn’t involved somewhere.
You may be right. But I can give you another example: the 300-odd experts recruited by Philip Tetlock, the psychologist, for his epic study of forecasting in political science. Prof Tetlock’s conclusions are wide-ranging and painstaking, but if I can be forgiven an excessively brief summary, he finds that all sorts of people with plausible claims to expertise – diplomats, political advisers, journalists and academics – produce lame forecasts of political and economic events.
Nate Silver seems to be able to forecast just fine.
Well, yes, notwithstanding the politically motivated “Nate Silver can’t add up” school of criticism, Mr Silver, and other statisticians such as Drew Linzer and Sam Wang, successfully forecast the outcome of the US elections in some detail. Contrasted against a background of bloviation, it was impressive. But if psephology is Exhibit A in the Museum of Successful Social Science Forecasts, let’s reflect on how modest our ambitions must have become: US elections are frequently repeated, with behaviour that shows considerable historical persistence, and an astonishing amount of detailed quantitative data are available. The elections take place at a fixed date, according to well-understood rules, and with a narrowly defined space of possible outcomes. It’s easy to see that forecasting a win for Barack Obama, while better than forecasting a win for Mitt Romney, is not quite as hard as successfully predicting if and when Greece will leave the eurozone.
You’re pretty quick with the excuses.
No excuses. We just can’t see into the future. I don’t think that’s any surprise, nor an embarrassment. The question is why there’s such a hunger for social science predictions, when the practice is so transparently pointless.
It’s a test of expertise.
If so, then monkeys are as expert as professors of political economy. I wouldn’t want to be quite so cynical. I think forecasting in a complex world is a poor test of expertise because luck is the overwhelming success factor.
So why do we love predictions?
No idea. Here’s one guess: saying “the UK economy will recover strongly in 2012” or “President Assad will be out of office by June” compresses a vast amount of expertise and analysis into a few words.
But the words are probably meaningless.
Yes. But it’s Christmas. Actually studying the situation in detail is far too much like hard work. The wonderful thing about a forecast is that both the forecaster and his audience feel that something profound has been expressed. And nobody will remember the forecast anyway.

选择正确答案

What is true, about economists and their forcasts, according to the writer?

Good!
D是正确的。“卧底经济学家”哈福德用自问自答的形式先自黑了一番，不过，关于经济学家糟糕的预测未来的成绩的笑话，是有事实依据的。不管适不适合，人们总是期望经济学家们做上一番预测。

Economists usually have a good record of predicting the future.
FT columnist John Kay is famous for his accurate predictions.
Economists are often very pessimistic about the future.
People often expect economists to make forcasts.

选择正确答案

Why the writer use the example of Goldman Sachs’s notorious "25 standard deviation"?

Good!
C是正确的。作者在原文中说：It isn’t just economists who are terrible forecasters. Take the quantitative analysts responsible for Goldman Sachs’s ```

To show how catastrophic the losses were for the company.
To blame GS's poor predictions that lead to the financial crisis.
Quantitative analysts should take some of the blame for bad economic forecasts.
To show that quantitative models are ridiculous.

选择正确答案

Why Nate Silver seems to be able to forecast "just fine"?

Good!
D是正确的。Nate Silver准确预测了美国大选，还能预测一些细节，这让人印象深刻。但是，预测美国是一件容易得多的事情，它是有规律可循的、规则和时间确定的、有大量历史数据的，更重要的是，结果没有无限种可能：要么民主党胜，要么共和党胜。
B并不全面，而C中的“博物馆”是作者臆造出来的。

He is a good statistician.
There's an astonishing amount of detailed quantitative data available
He has got help from Museum of Successful Social Science Forecasts.
Predicting US elections is much easier, for there's not much possibilities.

选择正确答案

Which of the following forecast is the best example of "something profound has been expressed"?

Good!
作者说，关于预测的最棒的一件事是：对预测者和他的听众来说，预测结果怎样并不重要，重要的是一种“虽不明，但觉厉”的感觉。B是作者对经济学家这一职业的自嘲，D是对C预测的通俗解释。
你对2013年的经济局势怎么看呢？

“the UK economy will recover strongly in 2012”
“the whole point of the economic profession is to make dozens of mutually contradictory forecasts with impunity”
“25 standard deviation moves, several days in a row”
“according to our models, what we’re seeing is very unlucky”

放松与总结

您答对题目数: 0/5 FT中文网用户平均WPM: 3
我们为金融英语速读的用户创建了论坛，大家可以在这里相互交流经验，帮我们把这个栏目办得更好。

上一测试：爱国主义教育下的世界观

下一测试：共和党旗手埃里克·坎托

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<<后退

开始>>

您的正确率太低，在目前这个阶段，对你来说最重要的是提高英文水平和金融专业水平，而不是速度。请您点击后退仔细查看您答错的题目，并和原文对照。对原文中所有不懂的句子和知识点，也请一一查明。建议您：
1. 在进行下一次训练的时候，将滚屏速度保持在100以下。
2. 您可以找一些有声读物，如《经济学人》的audio edition，帮助你提高英文水平。

看得出你是非常认真来进行这次训练的，如果你坚持的话，你会获得非常大的提高。目前你的阅读速度偏低，可能是因为英文不是你的母语。不过，请不要放慢阅读速度。研究表明，阅读速度越快的人，其理解的正确率反而越高。因此，您可以同时提高您的阅读速度和理解能力。给你一点建议：
1. 一定要改掉默念的习惯
2. 不要一个词一个词的看，要学会把一个语义群当作一个整体来看。比如“an emergency $180bn injection of dollar”这个语义群，你要学会把他当作一个整体来看。
3. 看DVD的时候，切换到英文字幕。

用正常语速来朗读一篇文章，平均速度是每分钟140词。这说明你的阅读速度比朗读还要慢。建议您：1. 每一段的第一句话往往是最重要的。
2. “速读”最忌讳的就是“读”，不要一边看一边默念。
3. 在下一个训练中将滚屏速度设为140，迫使自己不能回头去看已经读过的部分。

您的阅读速度已经超过了正常语速，说明你已经开始有些速读的感觉了。美国大学生的最低阅读速度为每分钟250词，加把劲你就可以赶上了。建议您：
1. 养成习惯，读过的部分不要回头去看，这样会影响速读。
2. 加强“扫描”的训练，让自己的眼睛能“一目一行”。

您的阅读速度已经达到了美国大学生的水平，可喜可贺。不过作为金融从业人员，每天需要阅读数不清的中英文研究报告、公司年报、报刊杂志等，您还需要向每分钟350字进军。建议您：
1. 加强“扫描”的训练，让自己的眼睛能“一目两行”。
2. 对中英文的数字，尤其是大数字(million, billion)的转换进行总结和练习。

厉害，您的阅读速度已经超过了美国大学生的水平。不过，要成为巴菲特那样的金融专家，您需要锻炼出“一目十行”的火眼金睛。建议您在每次的训练中注意三个要点：
1. 您已经学会了将文章分成语义群，而非词来阅读，现在，你需要扩大每一个语义群中的词数。
2. 加快阅读每个语义群的速度。
3. 看过的内容尽量不要回看。

这就是传说中的“一目十行”吗？难以置信！

世界纪录才每分钟416,250字，居然被你破了！无语...

讨论和交流 请发表和本次测试相关的内容

讨论和交流请发表和本次测试相关的内容