1 . One of the curious things about social networks is the way that some messages, pictures, or ideas can spread like wildfire while others that seem just as catchy or interesting barely register at all.
Before you go deep into the puzzle, consider this: If you measure the height of your male friends, for example, the average is about 170 centimeters. You are 172 and your friends are all about the same height as you are. Indeed, the mathematical concept of “average” is a good way to capture the nature of this data set.
But imagine that one of your friends was much taller than you. This person would dramatically skew the average, which would make your friends taller than you, on average. In this case, the “average” is a poor way to capture this data set.
Exactly this situation occurs on social networks. On average, your coauthors will be cited more often than you, and the people you follow will post more frequently than you, and so on.
Now Lerman from University of Southern California has discovered a related paradox, which they call the majority illusion. They illustrate this illusion with an example. They take 14 nodes linked up to form a small network. They then color three of these nodes and count how many of the remaining nodes link to them in a single step.
In one situation, the uncolored nodes see more than half of their neighbors as colored. This is the majority illusion — the local impression that a specific feature is common when the global truth is entirely different.
So how popular is it in the real world? It’s found out that the majority illusion occurs in almost all network scenarios. “The effect is largest in the political blogs network, where 60% of nodes will have majority active neighbours, even when only 20% of the nodes are truly active,” says Lerman.
It immediately explains many interesting phenomena. For a start, it shows how some content can spread globally while other similar content does not — the key is to start with a small number of well-connected early adopters fooling the rest of the network into thinking it is common. The affected nodes then find it natural to follow the trend. A real spread finally comes into being.
But it is not yet a marketer’s charter. For that, marketers must first identify the popular nodes that can create the majority illusion for the target audience. These influencers must then be persuaded to adopt the desired behavior or product, which is essential to the prospect of the marketing plan.
1. The phrase skew the average in the passage most probably refers to the action of ________.| A．hiding the real average to be unrecognizable to others |
| B．producing an average against the general feature of data |
| C．working out the common feature suggested by the average |
| D．ignoring the average because of the frequency by which it is reviewed |
| A．Majority illusion rarely has impacts except in political blogs field. |
| B．The majority illusion on social networks relies on that people you follow post more than you. |
| C．The essence of successful opinion spread is to initiate the trend with well-connected sharers. |
| D．The spread scale of ideas on networks mainly depends on the quality of content. |
| A．thoroughly understand the concept of majority illusion |
| B．accurately figure out who is the powerful person to affect others |
| C．definitely decide who are the target audience for the promotion |
| D．successfully convince the influencers to practice certain action |
| A．The social network vision that tricks your mind. |
| B．Who is stealing your network identity? |
| C．Minority network opinion spread, curse or blessing? |
| D．Have you been misled during the last political voting? |
2 . Recently, there’s been a lot of talk in U.S. about the “data problem.” It ought to give the “datadriven” school reformers pause to reconsider. Maybe we are just creating a bubble that too will burst if we continue to base our actions on the belief that only scores on standardized instruments are evidence of success.
All “reliability” tells us is that the student would get a similar score on a similar test if given at another time or place. But all scores on old or new tests have measurement errors. Like Wall Street’s numbers, we have no independent basis for relying on these scores. Likewise, validity is in the eye of a certain standard of judgments. How ridiculous it is to say for sure that these judgments are justified!
When some parents told me that their children seemed to read well, but scored poorly, they often believed the indirect evidence, test score, and not the direct evidence, listening to their children read. Some parents had been trained to distrust judgment and rely on “real evidence”. My own 8-year-old son also used to “fail” a 3rd grade reading test even though I “knew” he could read fluently.
We need schools that “train” our judgment, which help us become adults who are in the habit of bringing judgment to bear on complex phenomenon.
| A．Even the technical meaning of “good tests” is open to question. |
| B．It’s when I became a test doubter. |
| C．Different groups of people fit different test patterns. |
| D．On all achievement tests, we’re promised beforehand a population that fits a normal curve (曲线). |
| E．This includes judging which expertise to “trust” and defending such choices. |
| F．Time spent on standardized tests is, in many cases, equal to that on study. |
| A．as | B．just as | C．as if | D．as have |
Surveys indicate that a third of Britons regularly eat on their own. OpenTable, an online restaurant booking app, found that solo dining in New York increased by 80% during the past 5 years. And in Japan, the world capital of solo dining, a trend for "low interaction dining11 has taken off. Restaurants are opening which facilitate the ultimate solo dining experience: passing bowls of noodles through black curtains into individual booths.
Is this a worrying trend? We think so. Research is revealing the negative impacts of eating alone, which has been found to be linked to a variety of mental and physical health conditions, from depression and diabetes to high blood pressure.
So it's cheering that hundreds of food sharing initiatives have sprung up around the world. There's London's Casserole Club, for example, whose volunteers share portions of home-cooked food with people in their area who aren't always able to cook for themselves, in which case they put an end to food waste. Or there is South Africa's Food Jams, social gatherings in which participants are paired up, preferably with strangers, and given a portion of the meal to prepare. Many participants interviewed mentioned that their loneliness was greatly relieved. Such initiatives offer lessons of all kinds to those thinking about how our food systems need to change. They also somewhat compensate for the undesirable outcomes sole eating brings.
So why do people stop eating together? There are a variety of reasons. Authors such as Michael Pollan argue that it is due to the fact that people attach less value to home-based labor, including cooking. The widening of the workforce, which brought many women out of the kitchen and into the workplace during the 20th century, also contributed. Meanwhile, the growth in insecure and inconsistent working patterns among a growing proportion of the population also discourages meals eaten communally.
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5 . In the Fake News Era, Building Trust with Consumers Is Crucial
With consumers growing increasingly frustrated with online advertising and privacy concerns, how to you convince shoppers to buy your narrative（叙述）, let alone your product?
A recent report by Trust-Radius, a software review company that connects buyers and vendors（供应商）, may be able to shed some light. Among other interesting findings, it turns out that it may actually benefit brands to be painfully
Consumer awareness of influencer marketing tactics（策略）is increasing.
Transparency（透明度）is crucial. The report found that there is a large trust
Along with the combination of take news, advertising fraud, and data leaks, there have been fake reviews as well. Review sites have been
The challenge for brands today is determining how to use the
| A．nervous | B．honest | C．careful | D．particular |
| A．Instead | B．Otherwise | C．Moreover | D．However |
| A．reviews | B．reactions | C．experiences | D．instructions |
| A．weight | B．risks | C．warnings | D．burdens |
| A．relationship | B．influence | C．gap | D．extension |
| A．refuse | B．hesitate | C．desire | D．claim |
| A．advanced | B．perfect | C．remarkable | D．unique |
| A．consider | B．offer | C．select | D．exercise |
| A．efficient | B．profitable | C．human | D．responsible |
| A．associated with | B．mistaken by | C．praised as | D．criticized for |
| A．On the contrary | B．In fact | C．By contrast | D．In a word |
| A．cooperation | B．complaint | C．interaction | D．appointment |
| A．safety | B．loyalty | C．convenience | D．employment |
| A．money | B．choice | C．habit | D．voice |
| A．dialogue | B．debate | C．competition | D．contract |
Uh-oh, the new year's just begun and already you're finding it hard to keep those resolutions to junk the junk food, get off the couch or kick smoking. There's a biological reason why a lot of our bad habits are so hard to break – they get
"Why are bad habits stronger? You're fighting against the power of an immediate reward," says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse and an authority on the brain's pleasure pathway.
"We all as creatures are behaving that way, to give greater value to an immediate reward as opposed to
How this bit of happiness turns into a habit involves a pleasure-sensing chemicalnamed dopamine. It causes the brain
People tend to overestimate their ability to resist temptations around them, thus
A movement to pay people for behavior changes may exploit that connection, as some companies offer employees outright payments or insurance reduction for adopting better habits.
Repeat, repeat, repeat the new behavior – the same routine at the same time of day. You decide to exercise. Doing it at the same time of the morning, rather than fitting it in casually,
Exercise itself raises dopamine levels, so eventually your brain will get a feel-good hit
Besides, try to reward yourself with
For many well-educated travelers, buying a copy of Lonely Planet is the first task before taking a vacation abroad. Founded in 1973, Lonely Planet is the biggest guidebook series in many countries. It’s published in 11 languages including Chinese.
But when the BBC confirmed on March 19 that it had sold the entire Lonely Planet series to a US billionaire at a significant deficit(赤字), many commented that the deal sang the swan song for the printed guidebook.
The rise of the Internet and the prevalence of smartphones have become a burden on the print media. Why would travelers bring a heavy guidebook when they can download the apps to their smartphone in an instant? Furthermore, alternative and free travel content is readily available on the Internet, from Wikivoyage to TripAdvisor which provide excellent guidance on your trips.
But the Internet is not the only reason that guidebooks are in decline. It is also widely accepted that the physical guidebook has such complete content that can kill any sense of personal exploration. With the guide books, all those backpacker feet ended up following routine trade routes, and in those routes was little room for initiative.
It’s also pointed out that the guidebook is not exactly good for tourism. Often the shops and restaurants that thrived on a recommendation in the guidebook relaxed and discovered that it didn’t matter: the legions of eager travelers keep on coming anyway. They gradually become uncompetitive.
And yet, despite the rise of new media, it’s believed there is still a place for printed guidebooks, at least for the time being as books still offer readers the kind of feeling that virtual tools can’t provide, more of a compelling, touchable interaction.
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1.
| A．Academic and professional prospects. |
| B．Life conditions on campus. |
| C．Tuition and geographic advantages. |
| D．Ranks among all the universities. |
| A．Strong program background. |
| B．Low living expenses. |
| C．Circle of contacts on campus. |
| D．Agreeable weather. |
| A．Because they can hire talents from UCLA. |
| B．Because foreign talents can be employed. |
| C．Because their companies are near beaches. |
| D．Because their bosses are from UCLA. |
| A．Moving to live with his parents. |
| B．Pursuing graduate study at UCLA. |
| C．Accepting the offer from Chicago University. |
| D．Keeping comparing the two Universities. |
1.
| A．For how long the event will last. |
| B．The site address to purchase the event ticket. |
| C．The past achievements the lecturer has made. |
| D．The location where the lecture is to happen. |
| A．Stand out and hold a poster for the event. |
| B．Cover other event ads with your event ad. |
| C．Rent school channel to introduce the event. |
| D．Use modern communication media to spread the event. |
| A．Tips on advertising campus events. |
| B．Food work wonders to attract campus event attendees. |
| C．The rise of modern social media on campus. |
| D．Challenges to prepare for a high-quality campus event. |
1.
| A．Children looking for future husband and wife for their parents. |
| B．Children trying to earn wedding fund for their parents. |
| C．Children making plans for their parents’ wedding day. |
| D．Children taking part in their parents’ wedding ceremony. |
| A．Wedding dress. | B．Wedding style. |
| C．Food for wedding banquet. | D．Honeymoon destination. |
| A．The difficulties modern marriage meets. |
| B．The good relationship between British children and parents. |
| C．The unconventional weddings in modern Britain. |
| D．The new marriage concepts combined with traditions. |
