TED演讲:为什么你应该热爱统计学(8)

 This URL contains the words "statistics," "gov" and "UK," which are three of people's least favorite words in a URL. 这个网址包含单词“统计”，“gov”和“UK”，这三个是在网址中最不受欢迎的单词。

And the amazing thing about this was that the website came down at quarter to 10 at night, 惊人的是，这个网站在晚上9点45的时候瘫痪了，

because people were actually engaging with this data of their own free will, using their own personal time. 因为人们实际上在基于自愿的基础上，很积极地利用他们的个人时间为我们提供数据。

I was very interested to see that we got something like a quarter of a million people playing the quiz within the space of 48 hours of launching it. 我很兴奋的看到，有二十五万人在测试发起的48小时之内参与了测试。

And it sparked an enormous discussion online, on social media, which was largely dominated by people having fun with their misconceptions, 并且在网络和社交媒体上激发了巨大的讨论，这些讨论大部分被在见解偏差中找到乐趣的人们所占据，

which is something that I couldn't have hoped for any better, in some respects. 对于我来说，在某种程度上没有比这更令人欣慰的了。

I also liked the fact that people started sending it to politicians. 我也愿意看到人们开始将它发送给政客。

How well do you know the area you claim to represent? 你对你自己声称代表的区域了解多少？

And then just to finish, going back to the two kinds of people, 那么我的演讲要接近尾声了，回到那两类人，

I thought it would be really interesting to see how people who are good with numbers would do on this quiz. 我很好奇擅长数字的人是如何完成这个测试的。

The national statistician of England and Wales, John Pullinger, you would expect he would be pretty good. He got 44 for his own area. 英格兰和威尔士的国家统计学家，约翰·普令吉尔，你会觉得他应该做得非常好。然而他在自己的区域得了44分。

Jeremy Paxman -- admittedly, after a glass of wine -- 36. Even worse. OK? 杰瑞米·帕克斯曼--我得声明，是在喝了一杯酒之后--得了36分。还不如前面那位。

It just shows you that the numbers can inspire us all. They can surprise us all. 它展示给大家数字可以启示我们，可以给我们带来惊讶。

So very often, we talk about statistics as being the science of uncertainty¹. 所以我们常常把统计学作为一种不确定性的科学来谈论。

My parting thought for today is: actually, statistics is the science of us. 我今天的想法是，实际上，统计是关于我们自身的科学。

And that's why we should be fascinated by numbers. Thank you very much. 这是为什么我们应该为此感到着迷。非常感谢。

1 uncertainty   

n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物

参考例句：

• Her comments will add to the uncertainty of the situation.她的批评将会使局势更加不稳定。
• After six weeks of uncertainty,the strain was beginning to take its toll.6个星期的忐忑不安后，压力开始产生影响了。