Questões de Inglês

TEXT  

[1]   Humans make errors. We make errors of  

fact and errors of judgment. We have blind  

spots in our field of vision and gaps in our  

stream of attention. Sometimes we can’t  

[5] even answer the simplest questions. Where  

was I last week at this time? How long have  

I had this pain in my knee? How much  

money do I typically spend in a day? These  

weaknesses put us at a disadvantage. We  

[10] make decisions with partial information. We  

are forced to steer by guesswork. We go  

with our gut.  

  That is, some of us do. Others use data.  

A timer running on Robin Barooah’s  

[15] computer tells him that he has been living  

in the United States for 8 years, 2 months  

and 10 days. At various times in his life,  

Barooah — a 38-year-old self-employed  

software designer from England who now  

[20] lives in Oakland, Calif. — has also made  

careful records of his work, his sleep and  

his diet.  

  "People have such very poor sense of  

time," Barooah says, and without good time  

[25] calibration, it is much harder to see the  

consequences of your actions. If you want  

to replace the vagaries of intuition with  

something more reliable, you first need to  

gather data. Once you know the facts, you  

[30] can live by them.  

  A fetish for numbers is the defining trait  

of the modern manager. Corporate  

executives facing down hostile shareholders  

load their pockets full of numbers. So do  

[35] politicians on the hustings, doctors  

counseling patients and fans abusing their  

local sports franchise on talk radio. 

  We tolerate the pathologies of  

quantification — a dry, abstract, mechanical  

[40] type of knowledge — because the results  

are so powerful. Numbering things allows  

tests, comparisons, experiments. Numbers  

make problems less resonant emotionally  

but more tractable intellectually. In science,  

[45] in business and in the more reasonable  

sectors of government, numbers have won  

fair and square.  

  Almost imperceptibly, numbers are now  

infiltrating the last redoubts of the  

[50] personal. Sleep, exercise, sex, food, mood,  

location, alertness, productivity, even  

spiritual well-being are being tracked and  

measured, shared and displayed. On  

MedHelp, one of the largest Internet forums  

[55] for health information, more than 30,000  

new personal tracking projects are started  

by users every month. 

  We use numbers when we want to tune  

up a car, analyze a chemical reaction,  

[60] predict the outcome of an election. We use  

numbers to optimize an assembly line. Why  

not use numbers on ourselves?  

  For many self-trackers, the goal is  

unknown. Although they may take up  

[65] tracking with a specific question in mind,  

they continue because they believe their  

numbers hold secrets that they can’t afford  

to ignore, including answers to questions  

they have not yet thought to ask.  

[70]   Until a few years ago it would have been  

pointless to seek self-knowledge through  

numbers.  

  Then four things changed. First,  

electronic sensors got smaller and better.  

[75] Second, people started carrying powerful  

computing devices, typically disguised as  

mobile phones. Third, social media made it  

seem normal to share everything. And  

fourth, we began to get an inkling of the  

[80] rise of a global superintelligence known as  

the cloud.  

  Millions of us track ourselves all the  

time. We step on a scale and record our  

weight. We balance a checkbook. We count  

[85] calories. But when the familiar pen-and

paper methods of self-analysis are 

enhanced by sensors that monitor our  

behavior automatically, the process of self

tracking becomes both more alluring and

[90] more meaningful. Automated sensors do  

more than give us facts; they also remind  

us that our ordinary behavior contains  

obscure quantitative signals that can be  

used to inform our behavior, once we learn  

[95] to read them.  

  At the center of this personal laboratory  

is the mobile phone. During the years that  

personal-data systems were making their  

rapid technical progress, many people  

[100] started entering small reports about their  

lives into a phone. Sharing became the  

term for the quick post to a social network:  

a status update to Facebook, a reading list  

on Goodreads, a location on Dopplr, Web  

[105] tags to Delicious, songs to Last.fm, your  

breakfast menu on Twitter. "People got  

used to sharing," says David Lammers

Meis, who leads the design work on the

fitness-tracking products at Garmin. "The  

[110] more they want to share, the more they  

want to have something to share." Personal  

data are ideally suited to a social life of  

sharing. You might not always have  

something to say, but you always have a  

[115] number to report.  

From: The New York Times. www.nytimes.com. April 26, 2010.

One of the reasons why we make so many errors is the fact that 

TEXT  

[1]   Humans make errors. We make errors of  

fact and errors of judgment. We have blind  

spots in our field of vision and gaps in our  

stream of attention. Sometimes we can’t  

[5] even answer the simplest questions. Where  

was I last week at this time? How long have  

I had this pain in my knee? How much  

money do I typically spend in a day? These  

weaknesses put us at a disadvantage. We  

[10] make decisions with partial information. We  

are forced to steer by guesswork. We go  

with our gut.  

  That is, some of us do. Others use data.  

A timer running on Robin Barooah’s  

[15] computer tells him that he has been living  

in the United States for 8 years, 2 months  

and 10 days. At various times in his life,  

Barooah — a 38-year-old self-employed  

software designer from England who now  

[20] lives in Oakland, Calif. — has also made  

careful records of his work, his sleep and  

his diet.  

  "People have such very poor sense of  

time," Barooah says, and without good time  

[25] calibration, it is much harder to see the  

consequences of your actions. If you want  

to replace the vagaries of intuition with  

something more reliable, you first need to  

gather data. Once you know the facts, you  

[30] can live by them.  

  A fetish for numbers is the defining trait  

of the modern manager. Corporate  

executives facing down hostile shareholders  

load their pockets full of numbers. So do  

[35] politicians on the hustings, doctors  

counseling patients and fans abusing their  

local sports franchise on talk radio. 

  We tolerate the pathologies of  

quantification — a dry, abstract, mechanical  

[40] type of knowledge — because the results  

are so powerful. Numbering things allows  

tests, comparisons, experiments. Numbers  

make problems less resonant emotionally  

but more tractable intellectually. In science,  

[45] in business and in the more reasonable  

sectors of government, numbers have won  

fair and square.  

  Almost imperceptibly, numbers are now  

infiltrating the last redoubts of the  

[50] personal. Sleep, exercise, sex, food, mood,  

location, alertness, productivity, even  

spiritual well-being are being tracked and  

measured, shared and displayed. On  

MedHelp, one of the largest Internet forums  

[55] for health information, more than 30,000  

new personal tracking projects are started  

by users every month. 

  We use numbers when we want to tune  

up a car, analyze a chemical reaction,  

[60] predict the outcome of an election. We use  

numbers to optimize an assembly line. Why  

not use numbers on ourselves?  

  For many self-trackers, the goal is  

unknown. Although they may take up  

[65] tracking with a specific question in mind,  

they continue because they believe their  

numbers hold secrets that they can’t afford  

to ignore, including answers to questions  

they have not yet thought to ask.  

[70]   Until a few years ago it would have been  

pointless to seek self-knowledge through  

numbers.  

  Then four things changed. First,  

electronic sensors got smaller and better.  

[75] Second, people started carrying powerful  

computing devices, typically disguised as  

mobile phones. Third, social media made it  

seem normal to share everything. And  

fourth, we began to get an inkling of the  

[80] rise of a global superintelligence known as  

the cloud.  

  Millions of us track ourselves all the  

time. We step on a scale and record our  

weight. We balance a checkbook. We count  

[85] calories. But when the familiar pen-and

paper methods of self-analysis are 

enhanced by sensors that monitor our  

behavior automatically, the process of self

tracking becomes both more alluring and

[90] more meaningful. Automated sensors do  

more than give us facts; they also remind  

us that our ordinary behavior contains  

obscure quantitative signals that can be  

used to inform our behavior, once we learn  

[95] to read them.  

  At the center of this personal laboratory  

is the mobile phone. During the years that  

personal-data systems were making their  

rapid technical progress, many people  

[100] started entering small reports about their  

lives into a phone. Sharing became the  

term for the quick post to a social network:  

a status update to Facebook, a reading list  

on Goodreads, a location on Dopplr, Web  

[105] tags to Delicious, songs to Last.fm, your  

breakfast menu on Twitter. "People got  

used to sharing," says David Lammers

Meis, who leads the design work on the

fitness-tracking products at Garmin. "The  

[110] more they want to share, the more they  

want to have something to share." Personal  

data are ideally suited to a social life of  

sharing. You might not always have  

something to say, but you always have a  

[115] number to report.  

From: The New York Times. www.nytimes.com. April 26, 2010.

As to the objectives of self-tracking, it is stated in the text that 

TEXT  

[1]   Humans make errors. We make errors of  

fact and errors of judgment. We have blind  

spots in our field of vision and gaps in our  

stream of attention. Sometimes we can’t  

[5] even answer the simplest questions. Where  

was I last week at this time? How long have  

I had this pain in my knee? How much  

money do I typically spend in a day? These  

weaknesses put us at a disadvantage. We  

[10] make decisions with partial information. We  

are forced to steer by guesswork. We go  

with our gut.  

  That is, some of us do. Others use data.  

A timer running on Robin Barooah’s  

[15] computer tells him that he has been living  

in the United States for 8 years, 2 months  

and 10 days. At various times in his life,  

Barooah — a 38-year-old self-employed  

software designer from England who now  

[20] lives in Oakland, Calif. — has also made  

careful records of his work, his sleep and  

his diet.  

  "People have such very poor sense of  

time," Barooah says, and without good time  

[25] calibration, it is much harder to see the  

consequences of your actions. If you want  

to replace the vagaries of intuition with  

something more reliable, you first need to  

gather data. Once you know the facts, you  

[30] can live by them.  

  A fetish for numbers is the defining trait  

of the modern manager. Corporate  

executives facing down hostile shareholders  

load their pockets full of numbers. So do  

[35] politicians on the hustings, doctors  

counseling patients and fans abusing their  

local sports franchise on talk radio. 

  We tolerate the pathologies of  

quantification — a dry, abstract, mechanical  

[40] type of knowledge — because the results  

are so powerful. Numbering things allows  

tests, comparisons, experiments. Numbers  

make problems less resonant emotionally  

but more tractable intellectually. In science,  

[45] in business and in the more reasonable  

sectors of government, numbers have won  

fair and square.  

  Almost imperceptibly, numbers are now  

infiltrating the last redoubts of the  

[50] personal. Sleep, exercise, sex, food, mood,  

location, alertness, productivity, even  

spiritual well-being are being tracked and  

measured, shared and displayed. On  

MedHelp, one of the largest Internet forums  

[55] for health information, more than 30,000  

new personal tracking projects are started  

by users every month. 

  We use numbers when we want to tune  

up a car, analyze a chemical reaction,  

[60] predict the outcome of an election. We use  

numbers to optimize an assembly line. Why  

not use numbers on ourselves?  

  For many self-trackers, the goal is  

unknown. Although they may take up  

[65] tracking with a specific question in mind,  

they continue because they believe their  

numbers hold secrets that they can’t afford  

to ignore, including answers to questions  

they have not yet thought to ask.  

[70]   Until a few years ago it would have been  

pointless to seek self-knowledge through  

numbers.  

  Then four things changed. First,  

electronic sensors got smaller and better.  

[75] Second, people started carrying powerful  

computing devices, typically disguised as  

mobile phones. Third, social media made it  

seem normal to share everything. And  

fourth, we began to get an inkling of the  

[80] rise of a global superintelligence known as  

the cloud.  

  Millions of us track ourselves all the  

time. We step on a scale and record our  

weight. We balance a checkbook. We count  

[85] calories. But when the familiar pen-and

paper methods of self-analysis are 

enhanced by sensors that monitor our  

behavior automatically, the process of self

tracking becomes both more alluring and

[90] more meaningful. Automated sensors do  

more than give us facts; they also remind  

us that our ordinary behavior contains  

obscure quantitative signals that can be  

used to inform our behavior, once we learn  

[95] to read them.  

  At the center of this personal laboratory  

is the mobile phone. During the years that  

personal-data systems were making their  

rapid technical progress, many people  

[100] started entering small reports about their  

lives into a phone. Sharing became the  

term for the quick post to a social network:  

a status update to Facebook, a reading list  

on Goodreads, a location on Dopplr, Web  

[105] tags to Delicious, songs to Last.fm, your  

breakfast menu on Twitter. "People got  

used to sharing," says David Lammers

Meis, who leads the design work on the

fitness-tracking products at Garmin. "The  

[110] more they want to share, the more they  

want to have something to share." Personal  

data are ideally suited to a social life of  

sharing. You might not always have  

something to say, but you always have a  

[115] number to report.  

From: The New York Times. www.nytimes.com. April 26, 2010.

In the sentence "Corporate executives facing down hostile shareholders load their pockets full of numbers.” (lines 32-34), the part in italics means

  In August of 2000, a Japanese scientist named Toshiyuki Nakagaki announced that he had trained an amoebalike organism called slime mold to find the shortest route through a maze. Nakagaki had placed the mold in a small maze comprising four possible routes and planted pieces of food at two of the exits. Despite its being an incredibly primitive organism (a close relative of ordinary fungi) with no centralized brain whatsoever, the slime mold managed to plot the most efficient route to the food, stretching its body through the maze so that it connected directly to the two food sources. Without any apparent cognitive resources, the slime mold had “solved” the maze puzzle. 

  For such a simple organism, the slime mold has an impressive intellectual pedigree. Nakagaki’s announcement was only the latest in a long chain of investigations into the subtleties of slime mold behavior. For scientists trying to understand systems that use relatively simple components to build higher-level intelligence, the slime mold may someday be seen as the equivalent of the finches and tortoises that Darwin observed on the Galapagos Islands. 

  How did such a lowly organism come to play such an important scientific role? That story begins in the late sixties in New York City, with a scientist named Evelyn Fox Keller. A Harvard Ph.D. in physics, Keller had written her dissertation on molecular biology, and she had spent some time exploring the nascent field of “non-equilibrium thermodynamics”, which in later years would come to be associated with complexity theory. By 1968, she was working as an associate at Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan, thinking about the application of mathematics to biological problems. Mathematics had played such a tremendous role in expanding our understanding of physics, Keller thought – so perhaps it might also be useful for understanding living systems.

  In the spring of 1968, Keller met a visiting scholar named Lee Segel, an applied mathematician who shared her interests. It was Segel who first introduced her to the bizarre conduct of the slime mold, and together they began a series of investigations that would help transform not just our understanding of biological development but also the disparate worlds of brain science, software design, and urban studies. 

(…) 

Johson, Steven. Emergence. Peguin Books Ltd. 2001, pp. 11-12. 

Indique a opção em que a reescrita do trecho “Despite its being an incredibly primitive organism (a close relative of ordinary fungi) with no centralized brain whatsoever, the slime mold managed to plot the most efficient route to the food, …” (parágrafo 1) está correta e mantém o mesmo significado do texto. 

  In August of 2000, a Japanese scientist named Toshiyuki Nakagaki announced that he had trained an amoebalike organism called slime mold to find the shortest route through a maze. Nakagaki had placed the mold in a small maze comprising four possible routes and planted pieces of food at two of the exits. Despite its being an incredibly primitive organism (a close relative of ordinary fungi) with no centralized brain whatsoever, the slime mold managed to plot the most efficient route to the food, stretching its body through the maze so that it connected directly to the two food sources. Without any apparent cognitive resources, the slime mold had “solved” the maze puzzle. 

  For such a simple organism, the slime mold has an impressive intellectual pedigree. Nakagaki’s announcement was only the latest in a long chain of investigations into the subtleties of slime mold behavior. For scientists trying to understand systems that use relatively simple components to build higher-level intelligence, the slime mold may someday be seen as the equivalent of the finches and tortoises that Darwin observed on the Galapagos Islands. 

  How did such a lowly organism come to play such an important scientific role? That story begins in the late sixties in New York City, with a scientist named Evelyn Fox Keller. A Harvard Ph.D. in physics, Keller had written her dissertation on molecular biology, and she had spent some time exploring the nascent field of “non-equilibrium thermodynamics”, which in later years would come to be associated with complexity theory. By 1968, she was working as an associate at Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan, thinking about the application of mathematics to biological problems. Mathematics had played such a tremendous role in expanding our understanding of physics, Keller thought – so perhaps it might also be useful for understanding living systems.

  In the spring of 1968, Keller met a visiting scholar named Lee Segel, an applied mathematician who shared her interests. It was Segel who first introduced her to the bizarre conduct of the slime mold, and together they began a series of investigations that would help transform not just our understanding of biological development but also the disparate worlds of brain science, software design, and urban studies. 

(…) 

Johson, Steven. Emergence. Peguin Books Ltd. 2001, pp. 11-12. 

Assinale a opção que, de acordo com o texto, contempla somente as áreas para as quais as pesquisas de Keller e Segel contribuíram.