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  3. It’s no secret that the job of a political pollster is getting harder and harder every election cycle. People are cutting the la

It’s no secret that the job of a political pollster is getting harder and harder every election cycle. People are cutting the la

admin2015-09-30  49
问题     It’s no secret that the job of a political pollster is getting harder and harder every election cycle. People are cutting the landline, and regulations make it incredibly hard for pollsters to reach voters on their cell phones. Mass onslaughts of getoutthe-vote phone calls near Election Day swamp phone lines and make voters recoil from the idea of actually picking up the phone. Finding voters who are willing to talk about their attitudes and beliefs on politics over the phone is an increasingly difficult challenge. It’s hard out there for a pollster these days.
    Advances in computing allow us to analyze huge quantities of unstructured data(think "my random 140 character musings" instead of "my clear answer to a yes or no question"). Culturally, people are more and more comfortable putting it all out there online, from their tastes in music to their political preferences. Not to mention, samples can be enormous, dwarfing the "small data" samples of a pollster who interviews a thousand registered voters. Technological innovation and a cultural shift toward sharing(and oversharing)make it possible for researchers to assess what people think without having to go to the trouble of actually asking questions.
    Or do they? This week, the Few Research Center is out with a study throwing cold water on the idea that analyzing data from sources like Twitter can be an accurate substitute fur more traditional research methods. They find that Tweets are inconsistent in how they match up with polling data. Twitter users were more excited than American voters as a whole about the re-election of Barack Obama. Meanwhile, Pew finds that Twitter users were less excited about Obama ’ s inaugural address than their poll respondents.
    If the challenges facing more traditional "small data" pollsters are actually pretty big. the challenges facing "big data" analysts are huge in this area. It seems obvious that the demographics of the universe of "people Tweeting about the inaugural address" might be different from the universe of "registered voters nationwide. " While traditional pollsters can get a sense of the race, age, and gender of their samples and make corrections accordingly, it’s a lot harder to know all the demographic data behind the Tweets being analyzed. Not to mention, it’s much less clear what counts as a "positive" or "negative" Tweet in any given context, and that this up-or-down-vote approach to sentiment analysis might be too blunt an instrument to be useful.
    As technology moves forward, so too must the way people gather information about public opinion. But don’t count the "small data" polls out quite yet. While some high-profile misses by political pollsters raised important questions about how accurate election polls really are, quite a few pollsters managed to get it very close to right, even given all the aforementioned challenges pollsters face these days. Both "big data" analysis of online conversations and "small data" surveys and focus groups have a role to play in politics, and smart campaigns will value both as complementary methods of learning about where voters stand.
The author’s attitude towards the idea that analyzing data from sources like Twitter can be an accurate substitute for more traditional research methods can be said as______.
选项 A、unrestrained approval
B、mild disapproval
C、amused tolerance
D、indifference
答案B
解析 本题考查考生对文章主旨和整体基调的把握，以及细节的准确理解。首先，我们可以从第三段找到作者关于分析从例如微博上得来的数据可以作为传统研究方法的准确替代者的这种想法的论述，作者说Pew研究中心的研究结果给这种想法泼了冷水，并且举奥巴马的例子说明分析网络评论不能替代传统研究方法，可见作者对这种说法是反对的。其次，第四段提到传统民调员可以对他们样本的种族、年龄以及性别有所了解，并相应作出改正，而要想得到那些正在被分析着的微博评论背后的全部人口统计数据却要难得多．说明分析微博评论的民调方法不能取代传统民调方法。再次，最后一段直接说不能把传统民调方法就此淘汰，而必须把两者作为了解投票者立场的互补方式都予以重视。因此．可以说作者对这种说法的态度无疑是反时．再从文章措辞和基调来看，并不激烈。可以说是温和的反对。B是正确选项。ACD的说法均不正确。
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