《英语流行话题阅读:语境识词4500》25 The Art of Smart Guessing

　　Unit 25
The Art of Smart Guessing
Several days ago, interviewing job candidates, I grew tired of asking "What experience do you have?" I decided¹ on a quiz to find out how resourceful a thinker the new hire might be. Here it is: You are on a yacht sailing the Pacific Ocean. Your navigator announces you are over the deepest point, the Mariana Trench². 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?
Before reading on, try to solve this yourself -- paying special attention to how you might solve it. Did you make a completely wild guess because "there wasn't enough information?" Did you get too bogged³ 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? Most of my candidates simply made a wild guess. Rarely was someone willing to risk an approximation.
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. A problem that doesn't contain all the information deeded to solve it is called a Fermi problem, named after Nobel Prize-winning physicist⁴ Enrico Fermi.
Fermi once asked is students how many piano tuners there were in Chicago. To answer the question, he recommended breaking it down into smaller, more manageable questions. 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 250,000 pianos in Chicago. How often would each be tuned⁶? Maybe once every five years. That makes 50,000 tunings a year. How many pianos can one tuner tune⁵ in a day? Four? And how many in a year? Assuming 250 working days, one tuner can handle 1,000 pianos a year. So there's work for approximately 50 piano tuners in Chicago -- which, as it turns out, is reasonably close to the actual number in the Yellow Pages.
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.
By the way, the Mariana Trench is about six nautical⁷ 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. Could this be guess? If you know Earth's highest point Mount Everest, is 29,000 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.

1 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

2 trench   

n./v.(挖)沟，(挖)战壕

参考例句：

• The soldiers recaptured their trench.兵士夺回了战壕。
• The troops received orders to trench the outpost.部队接到命令在前哨周围筑壕加强防卫。

3 bogged   

adj.陷于泥沼的v.（使）陷入泥沼， （使）陷入困境( bog的过去式和过去分词 )；妨碍，阻碍

参考例句：

• The professor bogged down in the middle of his speech. 教授的演讲只说了一半便讲不下去了。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The tractor is bogged down in the mud. 拖拉机陷入了泥沼。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 physicist   

n.物理学家，研究物理学的人

参考例句：

• He is a physicist of the first rank.他是一流的物理学家。
• The successful physicist never puts on airs.这位卓有成就的物理学家从不摆架子。

5 tune   

n.调子；和谐，协调；v.调音，调节，调整

参考例句：

• He'd written a tune,and played it to us on the piano.他写了一段曲子，并在钢琴上弹给我们听。
• The boy beat out a tune on a tin can.那男孩在易拉罐上敲出一首曲子。

6 tuned   

adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调

参考例句：

• The resort is tuned in to the tastes of young and old alike. 这个度假胜地适合各种口味，老少皆宜。
• The instruments should be tuned up before each performance. 每次演出开始前都应将乐器调好音。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 nautical   

adj.海上的，航海的，船员的

参考例句：

• A nautical mile is 1,852 meters.一海里等于1852米。
• It is 206 nautical miles from our present location.距离我们现在的位置有206海里。