新标准大学英语(第二版)综合教程2-Unit-6-A篇练习答案及课文翻译

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2 Part of the explanation for bad luck is mathematical, but part is psychological. Indeed there is a very close connection between people’s perception of bad luck and interesting coincidences. 3 For example, take the belief that “bad things always happen in threes” (just like buses ...!) This popular notion would be unlikely to stand the scrutiny of any scientific study, but it must have some basis in experience, otherwise the phrase would never have arisen in the first place. What might be the rational explanation?
3. Do you believe one bad leads to another? Open answer.
4. Have you ever run into any unlucky things? Open ansБайду номын сангаасer.
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Can bad luck be explained?
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Key
Warming Up
1. Do you think the men unlucky? Yes.
2. How many unlucky things can you find in the film? First, they lost their way. Second, they had the wrong map. Third, they ran into the cop …
Can bad luck be explained?
1 Toast always lands butter side down. It always rains on bank holidays. You never win the lottery, but other people you know seem to ... Do you ever get the impression that you were born unlucky? Even the most rational person can be convinced at times that there is a force out there making mishaps occur at the worst possible time. We all like to believe that Murphy’s Law is true (“if it can go wrong, it will”).
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7 Whenitcomestobadthingshappeninginthrees,whatmaybemostimportant of all is the duration and memorability of the first event. Take a burst pipe while you are away on holiday, for example. It may take less than an hour to flood the house, but this one bad event can remain alive and kicking for many months, with the cleaning up operation and the debate with your insurers acting as constant reminders of the original event.
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So while the probability of being made redundant on any particular day and the probability of being sick may both be small, the chance of both occurring is almost certainly higher than the product of the two probabilities.
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9 As with coincidences, in bad luck there is a tendency to look for the examples which confirm the theory, and ignore those which don’t (because they are less interesting). Single bad events happen all the time. That alone should be enough to disprove the theory. Bad things also come in twos. But it is more likely that a friend will tell you “three bad things have happened to me, isn’t that typical” than “only two bad things have happened to me, which just proves that the theory doesn’t work”. After all, the latter is tempting fate!
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4 The first question is “what is bad?” 5 Some things are only marginally bad, for example the train arriving five minutes late. Some are extremely bad, such as failing an exam or being sacked. So badness is much better represented as being on a spectrum rather than something which is there or not there. 6 A particular event may only be a misfortune because of the circumstances around it. The train arriving five minutes late is a neutral event if you are in no hurry and reading an interesting newspaper article while you wait. It is bad if you are late for an important meeting.
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10There is, however, at least one rational reason why bad events might cluster together. It is related to probability and independence. Unlucky events are not always independent of each other. Anybody who is made redundant is bound to suffer some depression. That will lower the body’s defences, making the person vulnerable to illness, and also making them less alert and responsive (so they may be more likely to drop a precious vase, for example).
任何一个人在被解雇之后都会心情抑郁这会降低他们身体的抵抗力使他们更容易得病而身体反应也不像以前那么警觉敏感所以他们就更有可能遇上打碎贵重的花瓶这样的27text因此虽然人们在某一天被裁员和在某一天生病的概率都很小但是这两件事同时发生的概率肯定要高于它们分别发生的概率
Contents
Active Reading 1
Warming Up
Watch the clip of the movie Meet the Parents and answer the questions.
1. Do you think the men unlucky? 2. How many unlucky things can you find in the film? 3. Do you believe one bad leads to another? 4.Have you ever run into any unlucky things?
Map reading misfortunes
11So much for the general incidents of bad luck which crop up in life. Let’s get on to a specific one that everyone has encountered.
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12 You are off to visit a friend who lives at the other end of the city. You look up the road in the street atlas, and discover that it is right on the edge of the page. This means that finding the precise route becomes a chore of flicking backwards and forwards from one page to the next. Either the road is half on one page and half on the other, or it's spread across the fold in the middle of the book. And if it’s an ordnance survey map, then your destination is at just the point where you folded the map over.
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8 The longer the first bad event sticks in the front of your mind, the more opportunities you will have to experience two more bad events. A month latersomeonebumpsthebackofyourcaranda weekafterthatyouloseyour wedding ring. The mind which is already on a low from the first event will quickly leap to connect the subsequent misfortunes as part of the series. It wouldn’t matter that there could be a two-month timescale over which everything happened. By the time you have recovered from the water damage you are actively looking out for the next disaster. The timescale has been extended as long as is necessary to confirm the original prophecy.