1 . Nowadays, a multilingual voice app helping Indians shop online. India is a country where 1.3 billion people speak 22 officially recognized languages and hundreds of dialects, communication can be a problem online. Despite the number of Indian internet users who don’t speak English as a first language is large, 60% won’t buy online due to language barriers, according to a 2017 report.
Niki, a voice-enabled e-commerce platform, is trying to solve this, providing a virtual assistant that lets people use voice commands to do their shopping, pay utility bills and users speak to the app in their preferred languages, getting products or services.
The company’s target market is people who don’t live in cities and do not speak English in the northern Indiana states. It is planning to introduce seven more languages and hopes to carry out its business in 10 more states.
Thanks to a machine learning algorithm, Nikiis able to understand variations and dialects within a language with increasing accuracy. When the app first appeared, it had a 65% accuracy rate. Now with a bank of 250 million conversations, Niki can process voice commands with 95% accuracy, he says.
The app differs from typical online marketplaces. It limits the number of buying choices. Rather than offering many similar products as the supermarkets do, Niki presents a few quality-controlled objects from providers. That is more like a local store.
1. Many Indian Internet users don’t shop online because________.| A．they aren’t able to use the Internet | B．they have trouble using apps |
| C．they like to shop in the local store | D．they have difficulty in communicating |
| A．There are more products for them to choose | B．They may like the way NiKi talks with them |
| C．It’s difficult for them to buy good products | D．It’s just like shopping in a big supermarket |
| A．New apps develop quickly in India | B．The voice app helps Indians shop online |
| C．It’s hard to change Indians’ shopping fashion | D．Indians become interested in online shopping |
| A．Population and environment | B．History and traditions |
| C．Sports and entertainment | D．Science and technology |
2 . We’ve all been there - when lining up at the supermarket checkout counter, the lines next to us always seem to be moving faster than the one we are standing in. Recently a report by The New York Times looked into the math and psychology of queuing.
Study the customers
It’s important to know who the customers are. For example, if they are elderly people, they are more likely to move slower.
US mathematician Dan Meyer believes that a cart full of items doesn’t tell the whole story. “Every person needs a fixed amount of time to say hello, pay, say goodbye and leave,” he said. And that amount of time is about 4l seconds per person.
This means if there are five people ahead of you, each with 10 items in their carts, the waiting time will be 355 seconds. But if there is only one person ahead of you, with 50 items in the cart, the waiting time is 191 seconds. You do the math.
Go left
According to US science writer Robert Samuel, around 90 percent of people are right-handed.
| A．Be patient |
| B．Pick someone with a full cart |
| C．The items in their carts are also important |
| D．Each item in the cart only takes 3 seconds |
| E．It also gave tips on how to pick the fastest line |
| F．That means they will naturally choose lines on the right |
| G．How many people are ahead of you is one thing, and who they are is another |
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