For more information, please contact Grace Harvey at gharvey@theatlantic.com.
Presented by Atlantic LIVE
Speakers
James Hamblin, senior editor, The Atlantic
Ellen Cole, professor of psychology, The Sage Colleges; co-author, Women Thriving in their 8th Decade Susan Donley, publisher and managing director, Next Avenue Joyce Jed, founder and president, Good Neighbors of Park Slope
Kathryn Lawler, executive director, Atlanta Regional Collaborative for Health Improvement Elizabeth White, author, Fifty-Five, Unemployed, and Faking Normal Alison Stewart, contributing editor, The Atlantic
56. Age discrimination in mainstream American culture mainly refers to ________. A. old people’s being abused
B. old people’s negative image D. old people’s unemployment
B. There are many lectures by scientists. D. It is held indoors in New York. B
In Weapons of Math Destruction, data scientist Cathy O’Neil explains how big data exists everywhere in our lives, and that we hardly even notice it until it affects us directly. One application that has become particularly common is the use of algorithms to evaluate job performance.
She tells the story of Sarah Wysocki, a teacher who, despite being widely respected by her students, their parents and her colleagues, was fired because she performed poorly according to an algorithm. When an algorithm rates you poorly, you are immediately branded as an underperformer and there is rarely an opportunity to appeal against those judgments. In many cases, methods are considered secrets and no details are shared. And data often seems convincing.
As a matter of fact, the belief that school performance in America is declining is based on a data mistake. A Nation at Risk is the report that rang the initial alarm bells about declining SAT (Scholastic Assessment Test) scores. Yet if they had taken a closer look, they would have noticed that the scores in each smaller group were increasing. The reason for the decline in the average score was that more disadvantaged kids were taking the test. However, due to the data mistake, teachers as a whole were judged to be failing.
Wall Street is famous for its mathematicians who build complex models to predict market movements and develop business plans. These are really smart people. Even so, it is not at all uncommon for their models to fail. The key difference between those models and many of the ones being used these days is that Wall Street traders lose money when their data models go wrong. However, C. old people’s being overlooked
57. What do we know about the New Old Age Forum? A. The discussion is between old people. C. The speakers work for The Atlantic.
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as O’Neil points out in her book, the effects of widely-used machine-driven judgments are often not borne by those who design the algorithms, but by everyone else.
As we increasingly rely on machines to make decisions, we need to ask these questions: What assumptions are there in your model? What hasn’t been taken into account? How are we going to test the effectiveness of the conclusions? Clearly, something has gone terribly wrong. When machines replace humans to make a judgment, we should hold them to a high standard. We should know how the data was collected. And when numbers lie, we should stop listening to them. 58. What does the example of Sarah Wysocki mainly show? A. The drawback of big data.
B. The popularity of big data.
D. The misunderstanding about algorithms. B. can lead to many innocent victims
C. The new challenge teachers face. A. never make any economic loss
59. Widely-used machine-driven judgments ________. C. are more complicated than Wall Street’s data models D. can go wrong more easily than Wall Street’s data models 60. What does the author suggest in the last paragraph? A. Making decisions without machines. C. Making the algorithms more effective.
B. Making sure that the data are reliable. D. Making the data and algorithms public. C
Much like students doing a test, rats tend to skip questions when they have forgotten the answer. A series of smell experiments suggests rats are aware of what they remember, and behave differently when they can’t remember something.
Victoria Templer at Providence College, Rhode Island, and her team trained rats to dig through sand to sniff samples of cinnamon, thyme, paprika or coffee, and then go to a dish smelling of the matching scent. If the rats picked the correct dish, they got a piece of cereal.
But there was a twist. Although rats that chose a dish with the wrong scent got no reward, rats that positioned themselves next to a fifth, unscented dish received a quarter-piece of the cereal. This meant that when rats forgot what they had smelled in the sand, their best bet was to pick the unscented dish – provided they could tell that they had forgotten the relevant smell.
Nine rats were each tested many times across multiple experiments. In some of these, the unscented dish was not there, forcing the rats to choose a scent even if they couldn’t remember it.
Without the unscented option, the rats picked the wrong dish 48 percent of the time. But when it was available, they chose the unscented option 20 percent of the time, and in those cases where they did choose a scented dish, the rate of picking the wrong one fell to 39 percent – a drop that wouldn’t be expected by chance alone.
Because the rats’ performance improved when the unscented dish was available as an opt-out（退出，不参加）, Templer says this shows the rats weren’t simply choosing the unscented dish for no reason.
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They seemed to have known that declaring that they had forgotten would still earn them a small reward.
In further experiments, the team found that letting the rats sniff the sample twice before choosing a match reduced the possibility of choosing the unscented dish. But making the rats wait longer between sniffing the sample and choosing a match pushed up the number of times they opted out.
“When they made good memories, the rats chose a scent less often. When they made bad memories, the rats chose it more often,” says Benjamin Basile of the US National Institutes of Health, who was not involved in the study.
People and some primates（灵长类） have “metamemory” – the ability to know what they remember – but whether rats have it too had been unclear, and this latest study suggests they might. People with Alzheimer’s disease often don’t realize it when they have forgotten something, so a test for metamemory in rats could be useful for rodent（啮齿动物） studies of these conditions. 61. What do we learn from the experiments?
A. Different experiments were carried out on different rats. B. The unscented dish was not included in every experiment C. Rats would be punished if they failed to choose the right dish.
D. The rewards of picking the right dish and the unscented one were the same. 62. If the rats were at a loss during the experiment , they tended to ________. A. choose the dish they like most
B. need longer time to make choices
D. choose the unscented dish if it was available
C. get the second chance to smell again A. every rat was looking forward to a reward B. every rat was trying to find out the right answer C. rats could realize that they had forgotten something D. rats didn’t want to lose the game in the experiments 64.What does the author think of the research on rats? A. It is meaningful in testing rats’ memory abilities. B. It is just a small step in studying rodents’ memories. C. It is useful in seeking an effective cure for some diseases. D. It is necessary to compare memories between humans and rats.
D
Here at the New York magazine offices, not far from where I sit, is a very long walkway. When you see someone at the other end of it whom you barely know, you may feel quite awkward, at least if you’re an awkward person (which I am). For the next 15-20 seconds, you know you’ll be walking toward this person. Do you nod? Smile? Ignore? Some combination of the above? It’s strangely, deeply unpleasant.
This isn’t a problem unique to our office. I’m sure at some point you have been walking down the
63. The choice of the unscented dish indicated that ________.
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street, noticed an acquaintance—that is, someone you’re not going to stop and chat with—and then dealt with the awkwardness of walking toward the person but having no idea exactly how to handle the approach. Eye contact is the worst part of these situations. Basic etiquette（礼节）says we should make eye contact with others when we notice them, but basic etiquette, not to mention common sense, also says that maintaining eye contact with someone you’re not engaged in a conversation with is unpleasant.
Can anything be done about this? I emailed a couple of eye-contact experts to find out. It’s useful to realize that this isn’t as big a problem everywhere as it is here in New York. Ronald Riggio, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, pointed out that cultural factors may worsen the horrordor(horror corridor走廊眼神交流恐惧). “New York culture is different from my Californian culture, and in New York the cultural norm is to not make eye contact on the street, ” says Ronald Riggio. “ But in California people usually make firm eye contact and smile warmly.”
Cultural or not, this is a problem for many of us. Jeremy Nicholson, a psychologist from Yale University, says preparation is part of the battle against eye-contact awkwardness. “Before entering a long hallway, or walking on the street, take a moment to center yourself,” says Jeremy Nicholson. “Take a breath and be mindful of the world around you ( not just the thoughts in your head or the things in your pocket).” He also suggests trying to scowl（怒视） less in general before any hallway or street encounters( This is a piece of advice that might be a challenge for New Yorkers). “Develop the habit of softening your eyes and keeping a smile on your face in public,” says Jeremy Nicholson. “Most of us stare intently at screens most of the day and scowl, which becomes our typical expression. But human interaction is easier with a more positive expression.”
So what should you do when you’re actually walking toward someone? “ It seems dishonest to avoid any eye contact if you know someone,” says Ronald Riggio. He offers what is a pretty straightforward system: “Make eye contact at 30 ft., and then break eye contact. Next, make brief eye contact again at 10 ft., and then look straight ahead.”
This approach makes a certain sort of sense: You acknowledge the person when you first notice him. Then you break off eye contact, so the situation doesn’t become awkward. And then you make eye contact again when you’re passing the person, because to pass the person without another acknowledgement would also feel strange.
Jeremy Nicholson suggests that getting better at these sorts of encounters could bring other benefits as well—not just the avoidance of awkwardness. “In fact, some of those interactions may end up being pleasant coincidences, promotion opportunities, or reunions with old friends,” says Jeremy Nicholson. “So, breaking the habits of hiding in our phones and tuning the world out with music may be the best thing we can do for both our social lives and professional careers.” 65. What is the author afraid of in the workplace? A. Greeting his colleagues on the walkway.
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B. Communicating while working in his office. C. Coming across acquaintances and reacting badly. D. Pretending to be friendly towards everyone at work. 66.The awkwardness of horrordor mainly lies in ________. A. what topic to speak on
B. how to make eye contact D. how to avoid other’s attention
B. Etiquette is often the perfect solution to it.
C. what expression to put on
67. What can we learn about horrordor? A. Some people are not bothered by it at all. C. It happens when one meets a total stranger. D. It’s a phenomenon only occurring in New York.
68. What does Jeremy Nicholson mean by saying “take a moment to center yourself”? A. Have your attention concentrated.
B. Try to be self-centered for a while. D. Regard yourself as the most important. C. Hardly practical. D. Reasonable enough. B. Taking every chance to avoid it. D. Being open to your surroundings.
C. Make yourself the center of the crowd. A. Absolutely ideal. B. Highly complex. A. Always wearing a happy smile.
69. What does the author think of Ronald Riggio’s straightforward system? 70 What does Jeremy Nicholson suggest doing to deal with horrordor? C Improving communication skills.
第四部分：任务型阅读 (共10小题；每小题1分，满分l0分)
请阅读下面短文，并根据所读内容在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。 注意：请将答案写在答题卡上相应题号的横线上。每个空格只填一个单词。
You know that look of wonder and joy that children get on their faces when they listen to someone read them a story? Schools across the nation are bringing in volunteers to encourage children in this very way. If you are a parent looking to get more involved in your child’s school or simply enjoy time with children, being a reading volunteer can be a great way to help support the upcoming generation of readers.
Reading volunteers work with elementary school age children to promote reading. They may read books to children, listen to children read aloud, or hand out books to school children. Reading volunteers promote the activity of reading, rather than focusing on teaching reading skills. They may read to a whole class of children, to a small group, or assign children to read one-on-one. Also they may work with programs offered by schools, after-school programs, or public libraries. The time reading volunteers spend with new readers provides encouragement while they’re learning to read.
Almost anyone who knows how to read can be a reading volunteer. High school students, college students, parents, grandparents, and police officers are just a sample of the kinds of people who become reading volunteers. Being able to read and wanting very much to spend time inspiring children to read are the only skills needed to be a successful reading volunteer.
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