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Now, here is the interesting part. As it turns out, the average number of items answered on the TIMMS questionnaire varies from country to country.
從問卷結果來看，國家間的差異很大，這是個有趣的現(xiàn)象。
It is possible, in fact, to rank all the participating countries, according to how many items their students answer on the questionnaire.
事實上，參加競賽的各個國家的選手，其排名很可能是根據(jù)回答問卷題目的數(shù)量來決定的。
Now, what do you think happens if you compare the questionnaire rankings with the math rankings. They are almost exactly the same.
現(xiàn)在，當你將問卷排名與數(shù)學競賽的排名比較之后，你會得出怎樣的結論？他們的結果幾乎完全一致。
In other words, countries whose students are willing to concentrate and sit still long enough
換句話說，如果來自某個國家的學生能夠長久
and focus on answering every single question in an endless questionnaire are the same countries whose students do the best job of solving math problems.
并專注地回答一份冗長的問卷上的每一個問題，那么通常這個國家的學生也具有解決數(shù)學問題的卓越能力。
The person who discovered this fact is an educational researcher at the University of Pennsylvania named Erling Boe, and he stumbled across it by accident.
發(fā)現(xiàn)該情況的是一名來自賓夕法尼亞大學的教育學者，俄林波，他偶然發(fā)現(xiàn)了這個事實。
"It came out of the blue," he says. Boe hasn't even been able to published his findings in a scientific journal, because, he says, it's just a bit too weird.
他說，這純屬意外發(fā)現(xiàn)。波甚至未曾在科學雜志上發(fā)表他的看法，這有一點奇怪，
Remember, he's not saying that the ability to finish the questionnaire and to excel on the math test is related.
因為他并沒有說完成問卷的能力和贏得競賽的能力有任何相關。
He's saying that they're the same: that if you compare the two rankings, they are identical.
他只說，它們是一樣的；如果你將兩個排名進行對比，結果會非常鮮明。
Think about this in another way. Imagine that every year, there was a math Olympic in some fabulous city in the world.
換種方式思考一下，如果每年世界上的知名城市全都舉行一場奧林匹克數(shù)學競賽，
And every country in the world sent its own team of one thousand eighth graders.
并且每個參賽的國家都派出一組由高中生和初中生組成的小隊加入1000名參賽選手的陣營，
Boe's point is that we could predict precisely the order in which every country would finish in the Math Olympics without asking a single math question.
那么不需要問任何一道數(shù)學難題，我們就可以精確地得知每個國家在奧林匹克數(shù)學競賽中的排名。波指出我們只需要給他們布置同一項任務，
All you'd have to do is to give them some task measuring how hard they were willing to work. In fact, we wouldn't even have to give them a task.
并衡量他們在任務中的付出程度，實際上，我們甚至都不用布置任務，
We should be able to predict which countries are best at math simply by looking at which national cultures place the highest emphasis on effort and hard work.
僅僅觀察一下哪個國家的文化最注重工作態(tài)度，就可以預測哪個國家的數(shù)學能力最強。
