Unit 6

T1

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").

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?

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.

7 When it comes to bad things happening in threes, what may be most important 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.

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 later someone bumps the back of your car and a week after that you lose your 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.

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!

10 There 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). 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.

Map reading misfortunes

11 So 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.

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.

13 It doesn't seem fair. After all a map only has a tiny bit of "edge" but plenty of "middle" in which your destination could be situated. Or has it? In fact the chance of picking a destination which is close to the edge of the map is a lot higher than you might expect.

14 Take a look at the map in the diagram.

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You will have a problem if your destination is anywhere in the shaded area marked on the map. This shaded area is just 1 cm into the page all the way around. It looks insignificant. However, the shaded area adds up to 56 cm2. That represents 28 per cent of the area of the whole page of the map, which means that any specific point that you are seeking on this map has a 28 per cent chance (that's nearly one in three) of being in an awkward position within 1 cm of the edge of the page. And if you regard being within 2 cm of the edge of the page as being awkward, the chance of ill-fortune climbs to 52 per cent. In other words, you might expect this misfortune to occur on almost every other Journey.

15 As in most bad luck stories, you forget about the number of times the road doesn't land awkwardly and remember the times it does, and in this case the chance of a bad result is so high that before long you are bound to be cursing your misfortune, or the map's printer, or both. This, incidentally, is why many modern road maps allow significant overlaps between adjacent map pages. In a good road atlas, at least 30 per cent of the page is duplicated elsewhere.

The lights are always red when I'm in a hurry

16 One of the best examples of selective memory where an unfair comparison is made between good and bad is in the relative frequency of red and green lights on a journey. For once, the perception of "I always seem to get red lights when I'm in a hurry" is true and verifiable. To simplify the situation, think of a traffic light as being like tossing a coin, with a 50 per cent chance of being red, and 50 per cent of being green. (In fact most traffic lights spend more time on red.) If you encounter six traffic lights on a journey, then you are no more likely to escape a red light than you are to toss six consecutive heads, the chance of which is 1 in 64.

17 Red lights come up just as often when the driver is not in a hurry; it's just that the disadvantage of the red light is considerably less if time is not critical. The false part of the perception is that red lights happen more than green lights. The reason for this is simply that a driver has more time to think about a red light than a green light, because while the latter is gone in seconds – and indeed is an experience no different from just driving along the open road – the red light forces a change of behaviour, a moment of exertion and stress, and then a deprivation of freedom for a minute or so. Red lights stick in the mind, while green lights are instantly forgotten.

生活中的倒霉事能解釋嗎？

1 每次吐司掉到地上總是抹了黃油的那一面貼地。每逢公假日必定下雨。你買彩票從來沒中過大獎(jiǎng)，但是你認(rèn)識(shí)的人里似乎有人……你有沒有覺得自己生來就是個(gè)倒霉蛋？即使是最理智的人有時(shí)候也會(huì)對(duì)此深信不疑，認(rèn)為冥冥之中有一種力量讓他們?cè)谧钤愀獾臅r(shí)期里災(zāi)禍連連。我們都愿意相信墨菲法則是對(duì)的（“該出錯(cuò)的，終將出錯(cuò)”）。

2 人之所以走背運(yùn)，部分是概率的問題，部分是心理上的問題。的確，人們對(duì)背運(yùn)的感知和一些有意思的巧合之間有著緊密的聯(lián)系。

3 就拿“壞事成三”這種想法來說吧（就像等公交車一樣，要么不來，要么一下來三輛！）。這種流傳甚廣的觀念可能根本經(jīng)不起科學(xué)的檢驗(yàn)，但是它必定有一些現(xiàn)實(shí)的依據(jù)，不然的話也不會(huì)有這樣的說法了。那么，什么樣的解釋才是合理的呢？

4 我們要考慮的第一個(gè)問題是“什么是壞事？”

5 有些事情只是稍稍有點(diǎn)不好，比如火車晚點(diǎn)五分鐘。有些事情則是糟糕透頂，比如考試不及格，或是被炒了魷魚。所以我們更應(yīng)該把事情的好壞看成是一個(gè)程度的問題，而不是非好即壞。

6 某件事情有可能因?yàn)橄嚓P(guān)的一些因素而變成了不幸的事?；疖囃睃c(diǎn)五分鐘，如果你邊讀著報(bào)紙上一篇有趣的文章邊等車，并不趕時(shí)間，那么這就是一件無關(guān)緊要的事。但是如果你要去參加一個(gè)重要會(huì)議，而且馬上要遲到了，那火車晚點(diǎn)就變成壞事了。

7 談到壞事成三的問題，其中最關(guān)鍵的因素是第一件倒霉事持續(xù)的時(shí)間有多長以及給人的印象深不深。比如說，你外出度假期間家里的水管爆裂了。也許不到一個(gè)小時(shí)你的家就變成了一片汪洋，而在接下來的幾個(gè)月中你的腦子會(huì)不停地想起這樁倒霉事，因?yàn)槟阋逊孔忧謇砀蓛簦€要和保險(xiǎn)公司就賠償問題討價(jià)還價(jià)，這些都會(huì)讓你不斷地想起這件事。

8 第一件倒霉事困擾你的時(shí)間越長，你遇到兩件倒霉事的幾率就越大。說不定一個(gè)月之后，有人開車追尾撞了你的車。又過了一個(gè)星期，你的結(jié)婚戒指不見了。出了第一件倒霉事，你的情緒本來就很低落，這時(shí)你會(huì)很快地把后來發(fā)生的事情聯(lián)系到一起，把它們看作是有關(guān)聯(lián)的一連串事件。即使這幾件事情的時(shí)間跨度可能長達(dá)兩個(gè)月之久，那也不會(huì)改變你的看法。等你從浸水事件中平復(fù)過來的時(shí)候，你已經(jīng)在積極地等待下一個(gè)災(zāi)難的發(fā)生了。這個(gè)時(shí)間跨度已經(jīng)被拉長了，直至能夠證明你之前的預(yù)言是對(duì)的。

9 人們碰上倒霉事的時(shí)候會(huì)像遇到巧合的時(shí)候一樣，去尋找一些事例來驗(yàn)證他們先入為主的想法，而忽略掉與這種想法有出入的事情（因?yàn)槟切┦虑椴皇悄敲从腥ぃ?。孤立的倒霉事每時(shí)每刻都在發(fā)生。光憑這一點(diǎn)就可以推翻“壞事成三”的理論了。壞事也可以是成雙的。但是你的朋友很可能會(huì)對(duì)你說：“我一連碰到了三件倒霉事，可真是應(yīng)了那句俗話！”，而不是說：“我只碰上了兩件倒霉事，這不正好證明了‘壞事成三’這個(gè)說法不成立嗎？”畢竟，說后一種話是要冒風(fēng)險(xiǎn)的！

10 但是，至少有一個(gè)合理的解釋可以說明為什么壞事會(huì)扎堆。這涉及到概率和獨(dú)立性的問題。并不是所有的倒霉事都互無關(guān)聯(lián)。任何一個(gè)人在被解雇之后都會(huì)心情抑郁，這會(huì)降低他們身體的抵抗力，使他們更容易得病，而身體反應(yīng)也不像以前那么警覺靈敏（所以他們就更有可能遇上打碎貴重的花瓶這樣的事）。因此，雖然人們?cè)谀骋惶毂徊脝T和在某一天生病的概率都很小，但是這兩件事同時(shí)發(fā)生的概率肯定要高于它們分別發(fā)生的概率。

看地圖時(shí)碰到的倒霉事

11 關(guān)于日常生活中突發(fā)的普通倒霉事我們就說到這里。下面讓我們來看一個(gè)每個(gè)人都會(huì)碰到的事情。

12 你要去拜訪一個(gè)朋友，他住在城市的另一頭。你在街道地圖冊(cè)上尋找去他家的路線，結(jié)果發(fā)現(xiàn)這條路線恰恰就在這頁地圖的邊上。這意味著要找到一條精確的路線，你就必須從這一頁翻到下一頁，不停地翻來翻去，很是麻煩。這條路線不是一半在這一頁一半在下一頁，就是被地圖中間的書脊夾著。如果你手里拿的是全國地形測(cè)量局的地圖，那么你的目的地可能正好就在地圖冊(cè)的折合處。

13 這似乎很不公平。畢竟一個(gè)地圖的“邊緣”只有那么一點(diǎn)兒，而“中間”的地方那么大，你要去的地方完全可以在中間啊！事實(shí)果真如此嗎？實(shí)際上，你隨便挑一個(gè)地方，它出現(xiàn)在靠近地圖邊緣的幾率比你想象的要大得多。

14 看一看下面的地圖。

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如果你的目的地在地圖上標(biāo)出的那個(gè)陰影區(qū)域里，你就遇到麻煩了。這個(gè)陰影區(qū)域離地圖四周的邊緣處只有一厘米的距離，這似乎微不足道。但是這些陰影區(qū)域的面積加起來有56平方厘米。差不多占了整頁地圖面積的28%，這意味著任何一個(gè)你要找的地方都有28%（差不多是三分之一）的幾率出現(xiàn)在離頁邊不到一厘米的尷尬的地方。假如你設(shè)定離頁邊兩厘米為閱讀不便的話，那你遇上壞運(yùn)氣的幾率就攀升到了52%。換句話說，差不多每隔一次你就會(huì)碰到這樣的倒霉事。

15 在大多數(shù)有關(guān)倒霉事的故事中，你會(huì)忘掉路線好找的次數(shù)，只記得路線不好找的次數(shù)，在這種情況下，你倒霉的幾率肯定會(huì)很高，以致于過不了多久你就又會(huì)詛咒自己的運(yùn)氣，詛咒地圖的出版商，或者兩個(gè)一起詛咒。順便說一下，這正是現(xiàn)在許多地圖允許相鄰的兩頁有很大重合部分的原因。一份制作精良的地圖冊(cè)，每頁至少有30%的部分會(huì)在其他頁上重復(fù)出現(xiàn)。

我趕時(shí)間的時(shí)候總是碰上紅燈

16 關(guān)于選擇性記憶，即人們對(duì)好運(yùn)氣和壞運(yùn)氣所做的不公正的比較，最好的一個(gè)例子就是路上紅綠燈的相對(duì)頻率問題。至少有一次，“我趕時(shí)間的時(shí)候，總是碰上紅燈”這種說法是真實(shí)可靠的。為了便于理解，我們可以把紅綠燈看作是投擲一枚硬幣，出現(xiàn)紅燈和綠燈的幾率各為50%。（事實(shí)上大多數(shù)紅綠燈，紅燈的時(shí)間更長一點(diǎn)。）如果在路上碰上六個(gè)紅綠燈，全部是綠燈就和扔硬幣連續(xù)六次都是人頭朝上的概率是一樣的，為六十四分之一。

17 司機(jī)不趕時(shí)間的時(shí)候碰到的紅燈其實(shí)和趕時(shí)間的時(shí)候一樣多；只是如果時(shí)間不緊急，紅燈帶來的不便要小得多。認(rèn)為紅燈出現(xiàn)的次數(shù)比綠燈多其實(shí)是一種錯(cuò)覺。產(chǎn)生這種錯(cuò)覺的原因很簡單，因?yàn)樗緳C(jī)有更多的時(shí)間去想紅燈，而綠燈的時(shí)候，車子幾秒鐘之內(nèi)就疾馳而過了——這其實(shí)和在暢通的公路上開車沒有任何區(qū)別——而紅燈卻迫使司機(jī)改變行為，一小會(huì)兒的時(shí)間里要強(qiáng)迫自己努力一下，承受點(diǎn)壓力，還要失去一兩分鐘的自由。所以紅燈會(huì)深深地印在司機(jī)的腦海里，而綠燈轉(zhuǎn)瞬間就被拋到了腦后。

T2

Science: fact or fiction?

1 Students aren't what they used to be. These days, it seems, some of them never even open a book. Such is the depressing picture painted by popular science writer Steve Jones in his book The Single Helix, laying the finger of blame on modern communication systems. The message is the medium ; once upon a time there were books, but now, Jones says, "The medium is, or so it seems, anything but lines of print on a page." Many students are just not used to reading books anymore – they're such an outdated form of communication.

2 So how do you get them to learn about science? Well, if you go into a campus bookstore you can find out. There are songbooks for biochemists, with chemical formulae set to music to make them easier to remember. Relativity is explained in a video game which is a simulation of a rocket journey through space: You can play tennis on board as the rocket speeds up or slows down. And there are cartoons to make even the most obscure scientific subjects accessible, and fun as well.

3 But even these methods of generating interest have become conventional. Rather more radical is the proposal which a physics professor has come up with – to learn science from the mistakes in science fiction films. Some of the films may be dreadful, but they hide a lot of helpful messages. Students just have to sit back, relax, enjoy the film, and soak up a bit of science at the same time.

4 A few examples will show what the professor has in mind. In The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), the Earth is pushed towards the sun as a result of two simultaneous atomic explosions. But this contravenes Newton's Third Law of Motion – namely, that action and reaction are equal and opposite. Since the Earth weighs six thousand billion billion tons, a huge blast would be needed to push it into the right direction. Supposing it hurled a hundred million tons of rock and debris into space. This explosion would require a bomb far greater than any that has ever exploded. But a few basic sums would show that such a blast, as well as killing every single inhabitant of the Earth, would only shift the Earth about a quarter of an inch out of its orbit.

5 So the film is fiction without the science. The same could be said of the 1986 film Aliens. In this film the crew saunter around the spaceship as if they were at home on earth – whereas they should be floating, in a gravity-free environment. The producers of Aliens would fail a first-year physics exam, but Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke, the brains behind 2001: A Space Odyssey, would pass the same exam with flying colours. On board the spaceship a giant wheel rotates, generating centripetal force and giving the astronauts on board a sense of "up" and "down".

6 The treatment of relativity in science fiction films is even more confusing. Take Star Trek: The Voyage Home (1987). As the spaceship revolves round the sun, it gathers so much speed that it moves backwards into history. But this is nonsense, not relativity. As Jones puts it, "Einstein said that nothing travels at more than the speed of light, not that the clocks will run the other way if you go fast enough. " Even Superman (1978) is baffled by the concept. It takes him a split second to fly round the earth anticlockwise to save Lois Lane, who has fallen victim to an earthquake. Jones: "Time is not like a car. It has no reverse gear."

7 Finally, what about those giant insects like the ones in Empire of the Ants, the 1977 film based on a story by H.G.Wells? The problem is their lungs, or rather, the lack of them. Ants don't have lungs, so they get oxygen by absorbing it through the tissues of their bodies. The bigger the ant, the longer it would take to absorb the oxygen – and their body parts would not be able to function well. So an ant the size of a human would be more likely to be gasping for breath than biting off the head of a reckless teenager.

科學(xué)：事實(shí)還是虛構(gòu)?

1 學(xué)生已今非昔比。如今，似乎有些學(xué)生從來就沒有翻開過書本。這是科普作家斯蒂夫?瓊斯在其《單螺旋線》一書中描繪的令人沮喪的情景，他把批評(píng)的矛頭指向現(xiàn)代通信系統(tǒng)。信息即媒介；從前有書本，可是現(xiàn)在，瓊斯說：“媒介是，或者說似乎是，一切，但絕不是紙上印的一行行字?！痹S多學(xué)生就是不再習(xí)慣讀書了——書是老掉牙的溝通方式。

2 那么怎樣使他們學(xué)習(xí)科學(xué)呢？好吧，你要是走進(jìn)校園書店，就會(huì)找到辦法。那里有生物化學(xué)家的歌本，其中化學(xué)分子式被配上樂曲以便記憶。相對(duì)論是用電子游戲來解釋的，那是個(gè)虛擬乘火箭在空間旅行的游戲：你可以在火箭加速或減速飛行時(shí)在上面打網(wǎng)球。還有卡通，它們使哪怕最艱澀的科學(xué)話題都變得有趣易懂。

3 可是就連這些激發(fā)興趣的方法也已變得老套了。更激進(jìn)的方法是一個(gè)物理學(xué)教授提出來的：從科幻電影的錯(cuò)誤中學(xué)習(xí)科學(xué)。有些電影也許糟透了，但其中隱藏有大量有益的信息。學(xué)生只需舒舒服服地坐著、放松、欣賞電影，同時(shí)吸收一點(diǎn)科學(xué)知識(shí)。

4 有幾個(gè)例子可以說明教授的想法。在《地球著火之日》（1961）中，兩顆同時(shí)爆炸的原子彈把地球推向太陽?？墒沁@違反了牛頓的第三運(yùn)動(dòng)定律——即，作用力和反作用力相等且方向相反。既然地球重達(dá)六千艾噸，那就需要特大的爆炸才能把它推入正確的方向。假設(shè)爆炸將一億噸巖石和碎渣拋入宇宙，那么這個(gè)炸彈的威力要比任何以往的炸彈都要大。但是，稍做運(yùn)算就能說明，這樣一場爆炸除了會(huì)把地球上的生物全部殺死之外，充其量也只能讓地球偏離軌道大約四分之一英寸。

5 所以，這部電影是沒有科學(xué)含量的虛構(gòu)作品。1986年出品的電影《異形》也是同樣。在這部影片中，宇航員們?cè)谟钪骘w船中走來走去，就好像在地球上的家里一樣——而實(shí)際上他們應(yīng)當(dāng)在無重力環(huán)境中漂浮才對(duì)?！懂愋巍返闹破丝赡軙?huì)在大學(xué)一年級(jí)的物理學(xué)考試中不及格，但是《2001：太空漫游》背后的智囊斯坦利?庫布里克和亞瑟?克拉克卻會(huì)在同樣的考試中以高分通過。宇宙飛船上有一巨大的輪子轉(zhuǎn)動(dòng)著，產(chǎn)生向心力，并給船上的宇航員一種“起伏”感。

6 科幻電影中對(duì)相對(duì)論的處理更是令人摸不著頭腦。以《星艦迷航：回家之旅》（1987）為例：宇宙飛船圍繞太陽飛行，速度越來越快，最后竟然飛回到了歷史之中。但這是瞎編亂造，而不是相對(duì)論。正如瓊斯所說：“愛因斯坦說沒有什么比光速更快；但沒有說如果你跑得夠快，鐘表就會(huì)倒轉(zhuǎn)?！本瓦B《超人》（1978）也被此概念所困惑。他在瞬間往逆時(shí)針方向繞地球一周去救地震受難者洛伊斯?萊恩。瓊斯說：“時(shí)間不像汽車，它沒有倒擋。”

7 最后，1977年根據(jù)H.G.威爾斯的小說拍攝的《螞蟻帝國》里的那些巨型昆蟲又如何呢？問題在于它們的肺，或者說，它們根本沒有肺。螞蟻沒有肺，它們是通過身體組織吸收氧氣的。螞蟻越大，吸收氧氣的時(shí)間就越長——這樣它們身體的各部件就不能良好地運(yùn)作。所以像人那么大的螞蟻更可能老是在大口喘氣，而不是把冒失少年的腦袋咬掉。

T3

Are boys more intelligent than girls?

1 It's an old idea. Boys are better than girls at science. Girls may be better at verbal skills, but when it comes to "hard" subjects like maths and physics, senior school and university classes in the UK and the US are predominantly male. With younger learners things are different: Recent research in US schools showed that in the fourth grade about the same number of boys and girls (67 per cent) said they liked science and might want to become scientists when they grow up. But by the time they reached the eighth grade the picture is very different. Twice as many boys as girls say they like science, and the number of girls taking higher-level science courses falls dramatically.

2 But why is this? Several reasons have been suggested by researchers. The first is simply that girls comply to the traditional idea that science is not for them. This idea is sometimes reinforced by their parents, and sometimes by teachers who tend to ignore girls in science classes and ask boys all the questions. As children grow older, science becomes more and more a "male" territory, and some girls feel intimidated by science laboratories, which they find unfriendly.

3 But there is a more radical – and controversial – theory. According to Simon Baron Cohen of the University of Cambridge, girls' brains are different from boys' brains – they have "empathizing" brains, while boys' brains are "systemizing". An empathizing brain tries to understand other people's thoughts and emotions, while a systemizing brain wants to understand the rules which govern the behaviour of a system. So girls make better carers, and boys are more able to make sense out of a map – a distinction that many teachers would agree with.

4 This may be true, but it doesn't mean that boys are more intelligent than girls. Nor does the theory imply that all girls have "empathizing" brains. On the contrary, data from the OECD consistently shows that girls do better at school – especially in reading skills – across the world, from Korea to Finland. This is confirmed by some simple facts from the UK. More girls than boys choose biology and chemistry for A levels, probably because they are needed to study medicine at university – and medicine is a "caring" career. But the few girls who decide to take physics – less than 25 per cent of all students – get much better exam results than the boys.

男生比女生聰明嗎？

1 這是個(gè)老觀念了：在理科方面，男生比女生強(qiáng)。女生可能在語言技能方面強(qiáng)一些，但一遇到數(shù)學(xué)和物理之類的“難”科目，英國和美國的高中和大學(xué)課堂上則大多是男性。情況在年齡更小的學(xué)生中有所不同：最近在美國中小學(xué)所做的研究表明，在四年級(jí)，約有同樣數(shù)量的男生和女生（67％）說他們喜歡理科，長大后想當(dāng)科學(xué)家。可是等他們上了八年級(jí)的時(shí)候，情況就非常不同了。比女生多一倍的男生說他們喜歡理科，而選修高等理科課程的女生人數(shù)則大幅下降。

2 這是為什么呢？研究者提供了若干原因。首先，很簡單，就是女生服從傳統(tǒng)觀念，以為理科不適合她們。這種觀念有時(shí)被父母，有時(shí)被老師所強(qiáng)化。在理科課上老師往往忽視女生，總是向男生提問。隨著孩子們年齡的增長，理科越來越變成“男性”領(lǐng)域 ；有些女生覺得科學(xué)實(shí)驗(yàn)室氣氛不友好，因而感到膽怯。

3 但是有一種更激進(jìn)——也頗有爭議——的理論。據(jù)劍橋大學(xué)的西蒙?拜倫?科恩說，女孩的大腦與男孩的不一樣——她們的大腦是“同感化的”，而男孩的大腦是“系統(tǒng)化的”。同感化大腦總是試圖理解人們的思想和感情，而系統(tǒng)化大腦總是想要理解主導(dǎo)系統(tǒng)行為的規(guī)律。所以女生較關(guān)心人，而男生更善于看地圖——許多教師都會(huì)同意這一區(qū)別。

4 這也許是真的，但這并不意味著男孩比女孩更聰明。這種理論也并不是說，所有女孩都擁有“同感化”大腦。相反，來自經(jīng)合組織的數(shù)據(jù)一貫表明，在從韓國到芬蘭的世界范圍內(nèi)，女生在學(xué)校成績更好——尤其是在閱讀技能方面。這被來自英國的一些簡單事實(shí)所證實(shí)。比男生更多的女生在高考時(shí)選擇生物學(xué)和化學(xué)，很可能是因?yàn)樯洗髮W(xué)學(xué)醫(yī)需要這兩門知識(shí)——而醫(yī)學(xué)是一種“關(guān)心人的”事業(yè)。但是少數(shù)決定選學(xué)物理的女生——占全部學(xué)生人數(shù)不到 25％——比男生的考試成績要好得多。