1 . If you can’t trust an expert to make a good prediction, who can you trust?

Try a crowd. Under the right conditions, crowds can make better predictions than the individuals in them-a crowd can even beat a single expert.

More than a hundred years ago, the scientist Francis Galton visited an English country Faithere, he came across a contest to guess the weight of an ox. Interested in mathematics, Galton gathered 800 guesses and dealt with the numbers. To his surprise, Galton found that the crowd’s guess (the average) was just 1 pound different from the ox’s real weight. Did Galton happen to collect a lot lucky guesses?

David Kestenbaumand Jacob Goldstein, a pair of reporters, wanted to find out. One steamy summer day in 2015, they visited the “Burlington County Farm Fair” in New Jersey. There, Penelope, a black and white cow, shining with good health, greeted them. She was as tall as Goldstein’s shoulder. The reporters led the cow onto a large, flat truck scale (秤). A curious crowd had gathered, but Kestenbaum and Goldstein carefully guarded the scale’s digital display (数字显示), It flashed 1, 355 pounds.

Later, far from the sweet smell of warm hay, the reporters uploaded a photo of Penelope to the Planet Money website. They invited people to guess her weight, and more than 17, 000 people did. The crowd’s guess was 1, 287 pounds. That was just 5 percent less than Penelope’s true weight. Impressive!

Among the crowd, some called themselves cow experts, while others probably couldn’t tell a cot from an ox. When Goldstein and Kestenbaum calculated the guesses only from the experts, the result wasn’t any better. In fact, it was even worse:83 pounds off for the experts compared to 68 pounds for the whole crowd.

Crowds aren’t just lucky. Lots of people with different bits of information and ideas can make crowds collectively smart. A crowd will always make a prediction at least as good as the typical person in it. Often a crowd will do better. If people in a crowd have reasonably good information, they can make excellent predictions. Some businesses, financial markets, and Internet searches rely on this phenomenon (现象).

If you want to predict who’s going to win the big game on Saturday or when school buses will fly, ask a crowd of reasonably knowledgeable people instead of a single expert. Just make sure the crowd has people who know different things and have different ways of thinking. Without a diverse crowd, predictions can go badly.

2 . Since 2020, the world has set a goal of safe water for all and has advanced toward it. However, the fast-growing bottled-water industry is _______ countries’ failure to achieve the goal.

The fast-growing bottled water can _______ the progress safe-water projects, by _______ their attention to a less reliable option(选择). The latest UN University report showed that the annual _______ of the global bottled-water market are expected to $ 500 billion worldwide this decade. This can increase _______ in water-depleted (缺水的) areas while _______ to plastic pollution on land and in the oceans. In fact, the industry’s greatest impact seems to _______ the progress of nations’ goals to provide its residents with equal access to affordable drinking water. In the Global North, bottled water is often understood to be healthier and _______ than tap water. It is more a luxury than a necessity. Meanwhile, in the Global South, it is the absence of reliable public water _______ that drives bottled water markets.

Therefore, in many low- and middle-income countries. ________ consumption of bottled water can be seen as a ________ of decades of governments’ failure to ________ commitments(承诺) to safe public water systems. This further widens the global ________ between the billions of people who lack access to ________ water services and those who enjoy water as a luxury. So it’s time to strengthen legislation (立法) to. ________ the industry and its water-quality standards.

3 . Thing you need to know about studying there study style

Since the 1950s, the Netherlands has had courses in English especially for foreign students. Students are expected to be critical of what they read and hear, and to be able of working independently. Foreign students will soon notice that at Dutch institutions for higher learning is people are expected to do a lot of talking. The most common form of teaching is the seminar or working group, where a small group of students work under a teacher’s supervision to analyze a certain problem. On exams, they have to show that they know the material, and that they have formed well-founded opinions on the subject.

Accommodations

If you are in an exchange programmer or an international course, it is quite possible that a room will be arranged for you. Accept it immediately, or you will regret it later. That’s because finding a place to live in a country as crowded as the Netherlands is not easy.

Before you leave China, ask your host institution whether or not housing will indeed be arranged in advance. If you are in the Netherlands and still looking for a place, ask the international relations office or the student dean for advice.

Expenses

Tuition:

Bachelor’s degree: about 2,500 euros a year   

Master’s degree: 5,000 — 12,000 euros a year

Living expenses:

Experience has shown that a year in the Netherlands costs a Chinese student about 450 — 750euros a month. Here is a breakdown of average prices of supermarket goods:

Litre of milk:   0.5 — 0.8 euro   Kilo of apples:   1.5 euros          Shampoo, 400ml: 4 euros

Tube of toothpaste:   1 euro     Bed sheet:   20 euros

Other expenses:

Haircut: 15 euros     Air ticket to China: 600 — 800 euros     Mobile phone call(one minute): 0.1 — 0.3 euro

Phone call to China (with IP card):   7euros(one minute)

Postage stamp in the Netherlands: Stamp for China:0.39 euro (1 euro = about 10yuan) 0.78 euro

Transportation

Trains, buses and trams run throughout the country.

If you really want to sample Dutch life, and get around quickly and easily, buy yourself a bicycle. Most students buy second-hand bicycles. A reasonable one will cost you 70 — 120 euros. You can find them at second-hand bicycle shops or at the bicycle parking facilities near railway stations.

7 . If you order a Burger King Stacker Quad,you'll be served with a hamburger with no trace of any vegetable in it,a fact boasted about in the TV ads that accompanied the launch of the product in the United States.The Stacker Quad may be extraordinary, but it is far from_________.Recent times have seen the launch of products that the industry calls"indulgent offerings"foods marketed specifically on the basis of how much meat and cheese and how few vegetables they _________, it is worth _________how strange these developments would have seemed just two years ago,when the _________ to fast-food was at its height. At that time,the American burger restaurant Wendy's added a fresh-fruit bowl to its menu.However, at the end of last year,the company quietly _________the menu,blaming a lack of demand for such healthy dishes."We listened to consumers who said they wanted to eat fresh fruit,"a spokesman told the New York Times,"but apparently they _________ .

The industry's_________, it seems, had been to listen to the market researchers instead of the food psychologists. People tell researchers what they think they want to hear,or what the respondents want to believe about themselves. But we know,_________ recent psychological research, that people drink more than a third more fruit juice when they pour it into a short, wide glass instead of a narrow,tall one,and that people will eat more of a product if it comes in a bigger package.We know that people will report that 'Black Forest Double-Chocolate Cake' taste better than"Chocolate Cake', even when the cakes themselves are exactly the same. _________, we know that just because people say they want to eat more healthily, it doesn't mean they really do want to.

Denny Marie Post,from Burger King, admits that the fast-food industry vastly __________the appeal of healthier product lines."Healthy eating is more a state of intention than it is of __________ ."she says.There is a very small percentage whose behaviour agrees with their intentions.Andrew Geier,a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, recently conducted an experiment in which he placed a large bowl of sweets in the lobby of an apartment building.Eat your __________. Please use the spoon to serve yourself read a sign he placed next to the bowl.He left it there for 10 days in a row,with,on alternative days, either a teaspoon or a large spoon that held a quarter of a cup of sweets.When they were using the __________spoon, people on average took two thirds more sweet. This __________is known as'unit bias'-the way we tend to think that whatever quantity a product is sold in must be appropriate amount to __________.

    1     I think about the beauty and appeal of Chinese culture, one of the first things that enter my mind is images of complicated Chinese calligraphy. I love to watch the older folks in the park dip and sweep their brushes across the stones. I imagine as they swing their arms that their movements are part of     2     dance and the watery messages left behind are the words to the song playing in their head. Unfortunately, just as the water slowly evaporates from sight, so, too, the art of Chinese calligraphy seems     3     (fade) away gradually.

This is the fear of Cui Zhiqiang, a senior calligraphy master with the China Calligraphers Association. “The style of writing among Chinese people today has been changed or ruined,” he laments. He explains this as the unavoidable effect     4     the everyday use of cellphones and computers. With the help of the pinyin system, people     5     “write” the characters by simply spelling out the phonetic equivalent. Skillful strokes have been replaced with tapping and typing.

It isn’t just the written form of Chinese that is being impacted by this phenomenon, though. The English language has been impacted, too. Computer skills are now considered so basic that the time once spent     6     (teach) cursive writing in elementary school is now being used to teach keyboarding. Furthermore, people have become so dependent on the spellcheck and autocorrect features     7     their ability to spell is suffering.

Language and culture are inextricably linked. The written form of the Chinese language     8     (carry) with it the stories of the traditional characters and the reasons for each and every change through the years. In light of its value, many people celebrated CCTV’s summer show,     9     brought together groups of Chinese youth to compete in a dictation contest. The show was well received and generated an interest in young people to improve their handwriting skills and encouraged parents to enroll their children in calligraphy classes.

Not all see the changing forms of our written languages as a negative thing. If you look at language solely as a tool for communication, then perhaps you might agree. Modern ways of writing are efficient and effective. But if you also see language as an art form, then we are truly losing something     10     (beautiful).

9 . In his 1975 novel Changing Places, British novelist David Lodge described the lifestyle of two literature professors who cross the planet repeatedly, trading a rainy English campus for a sunny California university, and vice versa. Along the way, many other things are exchanged as well, including affairs of the heart.

While scholars working today don't enjoy the same benefits—luxury hotels and business-class flights in particular—they might recognize that they still live in Lodge's small world. Since the mid-l970s, transportation and communication advances have made the planet steadily smaller and the number of international students has risen sharply in turn. In Lodge's novels, universities seemed changeless, white four decades later they are fully engaged in internationalization.

In the post Cold War era, academic relationships are becoming richer and more complex. Students in the Global South, eager to participate in the knowledge economy and receive some of its benefits, are driving much of the increased demand for education at all levels.That future profits and solutions to pressing global problems are to be found in advanced research makes international cooperation essential.

As a recent report shows, internationalization is a strategic priority for many universities and they're working to put themselves on the world map.When competing for new lands, however, familiar rules no longer apply and new guidelines must be established to increase the chance of profits, or at least minimize potential losses.

The internationalization of universities raises an old problem: the ability to connect to global development without losing diversity. Some aspects of global science, such as Nobel prizes, tend to promote a “winner-takes-all' system. Higher education institutions should take a critical distance from this tendency and embrace their diversity— there is more than one Treasure Island for science. Internationalization is not about going to places similar to our own country or institution. Instead, students and scholars can find stimulating environments and academic conditions that can challenge what they take for granted.

We generally assume that higher education and innovation go hand in hand, but we do not know how innovation comes about. The only reasonable assumption is that it happens in difficult conditions, when we have to overcome a problem. That's why it's important to put students and scholars in challenging diverse situations and help them learn different ways of thinking. From my point of view, enhancing access and promoting diversity should be the compass of all internationalization strategies. So, the ship has started, and let's sail.

10 . America has long been opposing adequate poverty policies because of its strong worry of thinking that the poor are responsible for their own situations, but a child poverty is too harmful and punishing to ignore. I, and a growing number of scholars, believe there is a solution: the government should give monthly cash allowances(津贴), without conditions, to every family with kids. (Higher-income families would have much of the money taxed away.)

A mountain of evidence now shows that poverty can lead to cognitive(认知的) and emotional damage in children. Despite policies that have expanded access to insurance, poor kids are still less healthy than the rest of the young population. They also drop out of school at higher rates, earn less money over time and are incarcerated(监禁) far more often than their better-off peers. That should be enough for us to recognize the moral tragedy that is child poverty, but we should note the broad effect too: reliable analyses show that the nation’s GDP is up to $1 trillion lower because of child poverty.

Poor children have many needs, but research shows that money may matter most. For example, a 2013 review of dozens of studies by London School of Economics researchers found that “Poorer children have worse cognitive, social-behavioral and health outcomes in part because they are poorer, and not just because poverty is related to other household and parental characteristics”.

It can also help reduce family stress and help parents provide a psychologically raising environment in which learning and social development can breed.

The historian Michael Katz correctly notes, “One of the odd aspects of the history of writing about poverty is the avoidance of the simple view that people are poor because they lack money,” yet both the left and the right defamed(诽谤) direct cash aid as a waste and a cause of laziness and abuse. It is good that Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has stressed the benefits of a universal basic income, quoting studies that show such cash allowances do not cause the avoidance of work, but his plan could cost $2.8 trillion a year and the poor would have to return welfare assistance like food stamps to receive the money. For far less money—about $100 billion—the number of children living in official poverty could be cut in half. Such a policy would be a humane(人道的), practical, efficient victory for a nation too willing to neglect its poor.