TED英语演讲：爱情的三大秘诀
TED是Technology, Entertainment, Design(科技、娱乐、设计)的缩写，这个会议的宗旨是用思想的力量来改变世界。TED演讲的特点是毫无繁杂冗长的专业讲座，观点响亮，开门见山，种类繁多，看法新颖。而且还是非常好的英语口语听力练习材料，建议坚持学习。
演讲者：Hannah Fry
演讲稿
Today I want to talk to you about the mathematics of love. Now, I think that we can all agree that mathematicians are famously excellent at finding it’s not just becau of our dashing personalities, superior conversational skills and excellent pencil cas. It’s also becau we’ve actually done an awful lot of work into the maths of how to find the perfect partner.
今天我想要和大家谈谈关于爱情的数学。 我想大家都 同意数学家在寻找真爱上特别在行。
但那并不是是因为我们精力充沛的性格， 超凡的对话技巧，和极好的笔盒。也是 因为我们真的花了许多时间精力在数学上， 计算如何找到完美的伴侣。
Now, in my favorite paper on the subject, which is entitled, Why I Don’t Have a Girlfriend --Peter Backus tries to rate his chances of finding love. Now, Peter’s not a very greedy man. Of all of the available women in the UK, all Peter’s looking for is somebody who lives near him, somebody in the right age range, somebody with a university degree, somebody he’s likely to get on well with, somebody who’s likely to be attractive, somebody who’s likely to find him es up with an estimate of 26 women in the whole of the ‘s not looking very good, is it Peter? Now, just to put that into perspective, that’s about 400 times fewer than the best estimates of how many intelligent extraterrestrial life forms there are. And it also gives Peter a 1 in 285,000 chance of bumping into any one of the special ladies on a given night out. I’d like to think that’s why mathematicians don’t really bother going on nights out anymore.
现在，在此学科中我最爱的论文，名为 为什么我没有女友(笑声) Peter Backus试着计算
他寻得真爱的机会。 现在，Peter不是一个非常贪心的人。 在英国所有适宜的女性对象中， 彼得所看的，就只是那个住在他附近的对象， 某个处于适宜的年龄阶段， 某个拥有大学文凭， 某个他很有可能相处地不错的对象， 某个有魅力的女子， 以及某个认为他也富有魅力的对象。 (笑声) 结果他估计在全英国大概有26位此类女性。 这看来很不妙，不是吗，彼得? 我们好好思考一下这件事， 在无数聪明外星生命形式存在的情况下， 那是少于400倍数的估计呀。 那也给了彼得一个 在某晚遇见一个特别的女子 28万5千之1的机会。 我宁愿想就是着那为什么数学家 不再怎么想晚上出去约会了。
The thing is that I personally don’t subscribe to such a pessimistic view. Becau I know, just as well as all of you do, that love doesn’t really work like that. Human emotion isn’t neatly ordered and rational and easily predictable. But I also know that that doesn’t mean that mathematics hasn’t got something that it can offer us, becau, love, as with most of life, is full of patterns and mathematics is, ultimately, all about the study of patterns. Patterns from predicting the weather to the fluctuations in the stock market, to the movement of the planets or the growth of cities. And if we’re being honest, none of tho things are exactly neatly ordered and easily predictable, either. Becau I believe t
hat mathematics is so powerful that it has the potential to offer us a new way of looking at almost anything. Even something as mysterious as love. And so, to try to persuade you of how totally amazing, excellent and relevant mathematics is, I want to give you my top three mathematically verifiable tips for love.
重点是，我个人其实并不 同意这种悲观的看法。 因为我知道，如同你们所有所知道的， 爱情并不是这样发生的。 人类的情感不是那样地秩序井然，干净利落，逻辑清晰，以及容易预测。 但我也知道那并不意谓着 数学无法提供帮助， 因为爱情，如同生命中多数的事物一般，充斥着许多规律， 而数学，最终，就是那讲求规律的学说。 从预测天候，到预测股票市场的开高走低， 到星球的运转，或都市的发展。 如果我们对自己诚实的话，上述那些东西，没有一个是 井然有序以及容易预测的。 因为我相信，数学的力量非常强大，以至于它让我们得以以新方法 重新 看待 任何事物。就算是和爱情一般神秘的东西也是。为了试着说服你们 数学的神妙用处， 我想要给大家三个最重要的在数学上可以验证的爱情秘诀。
OK, so Top Tip #1: How to win at online dating. So my favorite online dating website is
OkCupid, not least becau it was started by a group of mathematicians. Now, becau they’re mathematicians, they have been collecting data on everybody who us their site for almost a decade. And they’ve been trying to arch for patterns in the way that we talk about ourlves and the way that we interact with each other on an online dating website. And they’ve e up with some riously interesting findings. But my particular favorite is that it turns out that on an online dating website, how attractive you are does not dictate how popular you are, and actually, having people think that you’re ugly can work to your me show you how this works. In a thankfully voluntary ction of OkCupid, you are allowed to rate how attractive you think people are on a scale between one and five. Now, if we pare this score, the average score, to how many messages a lection of people receive, you can begin to get a n of how attractiveness links to popularity on an online dating website.
好，首先最重要的秘技一： 如何 赢得线上交友的机会。我最爱的线上交友#站是OkCupid(#站名：好吧，丘比特)， 这并不 仅仅因为这#站是由一群数学家所架设的。因为他们是数学家， 他们已经搜集了 近乎这十年来所有他们#站使用者的资料。 他们试着电子
邮件寻找 我们用英语上 谈论时间和自己的方式的模式， 以及我们和他人互动的模式。 他们发现了一些重要的有趣结果。 但我特别喜欢的结果之一是 在线上交友#站上 你的魅力程度并无法预测你的受欢迎程度， 事实上，让人们觉得你很丑 可以让你拥有优势。 让我向各位展示这是怎么一回事。 在OkCupid的一个愿愿栏目中， 你可以评价人们的魅力值， 从1到5。 现在，如果我们比较这个分数，平均分数， 有多少人收到信息， 你就可以开始理解 在一个线上约会#站上魅力指数与受欢迎程度有关。
This is the graph the OkCupid guys have e up with. And the important thing to notice is that it’s not totally true that the more attractive you are, the more messages you get. But the question aris then of what is it about people up here who are so much more popular than people down here, even though they have the same score of attractiveness? And the reason why is that it’s not just straightforward looks that are important. So let me try to illustrate their findings with an example. So if you take someone like Portia de Rossi, for example, everybody agrees that Portia de Rossi is a very beautiful woman. Nobody thinks that she’s ugly, but she’s not a supermodel, either. If you pare Portia de Rossi to someone like Sarah Jessica Parker, now, a lot of people, mys
elf included, I should say, think that Sarah Jessica Parker is riously fabulous and possibly one of the most beautiful creatures to have ever have walked on the face of the Earth. But some other people, ., most of the Internet ...em to think that she looks a bit like a , I think that if you ask people how attractive they thought Jessica Parker or Portia de Rossi were, and you ask them to give them a score between one and five I reckon that they’d average out to have roughly the same score. But the way that people would vote would be very different. So Portia’s scores would all be clustered around the four becau everybody agrees that she’s very beautiful, whereas Sarah Jessica Parker pletely pides opinion. There’d be a huge spread in her scores. And actually it’s this spread that counts. It’s this spread that makes you more popular on an online Internet dating website. So what that means then is that if some people think that you’re attractive, you’re actually better off having some other people think that you’re a massive minger. That’s much better than everybody just thinking that you’re the cute girl next door.
这是OkCupid得到的 图表 。一件重要的值得注意的事是并不是越有魅力的人，收到的信息越多。 问题是，为什么上面的这些人 比下面这些人要受欢迎得多， 即便他们都有相同
的魅力值? 原因是，并不是直观的外貌是重要的。 让我来谈谈他们的发现，以一个案例说明。 如果你拿Portia de Rossi为例， 每个人都同意Portia de Rossi是个非常美丽的女人， 没有人觉得她丑，但她也不是超模。 如果你拿某个人，比如莎拉杰西卡帕克(译者注：欲望都市女主角)状语从句：来她比较 许多人，包括我自己，我应该会说， Sarah Jessica Parker魅力极为出众， 有可能是地表上 最美丽的物种之一。 但许多其他人，比如，大多数的#友似乎 都认为她看起来像马。(笑声) 如果你问人们他们觉得自己有多美， 莎拉杰西卡帕克或波蒂亚德罗西 你要他们给自己打分，从1到5， 我猜他们也会大约 。一个和大家都差不多的数字 但是人们投票的方式各自不同。 因此鲍西娅的分数会聚集在4分左右， 因为所有人都同意，她非常美丽， 然而人们对莎拉杰西卡帕克却有截然不同的意见。 她的分差悬殊很大。 然而，事实上，就是那分差别具意义， 那差异让你 在交友#站上受欢迎。 所以那意味着 如果有些人认为你别具魅力， 你最好有其他人认为 你很丑。 那远优于所有人认为 你的英文邻家的女孩可爱。
Now, I think this begins to make a bit more n when you think in terms of the people who are nding the messages. So let’s say that you think somebody’s attractive, but you suspect that other people won’t necessarily be that interested. That means there’s le
ss petition for you and it’s an extra incentive for you to get in touch. Whereas pare that to if you think somebody is attractive but you suspect that everybody is going to think they’re attractive. Well, why would you bother humiliating yourlf, let’s be honest? But here’s where the really interesting part es. Becau when people choo the pictures that they u on an online dating website, they often try to minimize the things that they think some people will find unattractive. The classic example is people who are, perhaps, a little bit overweight deliberately choosing a very cropped photo,or bald men, for example, deliberately choosing pictures where they’re wearing hats. But actually this is the opposite of what you should do if you want to be successful. You should really, instead, play up to whatever it is that makes you different, even if you think that some people will find it unattractive. Becau the people who fancy you are just going to fancy you anyway, and the unimportant lors who don’t, well, they only play up to your advantage.
