英语听力：如何用数据表达频率、百分比和排名

Now, let's be a bond to talk about relationships that we express when describing data. We often need to say how frequently something occurs. Two out of three is a very common expression. For example, two out of three customers preferred the blue one. One out of every seven minutes is spent on Facebook. And did you know that one in four Americans eats fast food every day? So the important thing is to notice here is phrases. Two out of three or one in four, but also notice the verb. It agrees with the first number. So two out of three is plural. One out of seven minutes is singular. You might be wondering why not just say 66% instead of two out of three. The reason is for emphasis. If you say 66% of the people, it seems kind of general. But if you say two out of three, it seems like, oh, wow, that's a lot. Or we could say 15% of the time that people are on the internet, they're on Facebook. But saying one out of every seven minutes online is spent on Facebook, sounds much more dramatic. So you can use this to emphasize frequency.

Of course, percentages are very important in many cases when we report on data. We say the word point for the decimal. And we use the word percent, for example, 18.5%. Or she got 49.2% of the vote. When you use percentages and sentences, the following words determine whether the verb is singular or plural. Let me show you a couple of examples. I think you know about count and non-count nouns, right? OK, so look at these two sentences. 20% of the jobs are part time. Jobs is a count noun and it's plural here. So the verb is also plural. In the next sentence, work is non-count. So look at the verb. It's singular. 20% of the work is already finished. OK, you try it. What will the verbs be in these sentences? OK. OK. If the noun is countable, it will be plural after these expressions, which we call quantifiers. The majority of people speak English here. The number of students increased. Be careful about the word number. Look at the sentences. Would you use is or are? The first one is singular. The number of students is surprising. It refers to a number like 100. The second one is plural because it has the same meaning as sum. A number of students are finished with the course already. There's a difference between percent and percentage. Use percent when you could use the percentage sign. In other words, when you use a number, there was a 20% increase. The rate increased by 20%. Use percentage when you could replace the word with number or rate. The percentage was greater in the second quarter. The increase in the percentage of people without jobs was surprising.

Next, we're going to look at lists that rank things first to last. This chart represents the amount tourists spend abroad. You can see that Chinese tourists spend the most. But let's describe the ranking first to last. Think about how you would express the ranking. Did you come up with any of these possibilities? All of these start with the name of the country. China was first in the amount its tourists spent abroad. The US was second. China was number one in tourist dollars spent abroad. Germany was number three. China ranked first in the amount tourists spent abroad. Brazil ranked 10th. So you can see it's a good idea to know the ordinal numbers that express the order and the list for ranking. First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and so on.

We looked at ways to make comparisons in our course on meetings and also in negotiations. So let's see how we use comparisons in talking about data. A simple comparison would be describing nouns in subject position. Here are some examples looking at budget or low cost travel to various cities. Think about how you would compare Pokkara and Zurich. You could say Pokkara isn't as expensive as Zurich, or Pokkara is less expensive than Zurich. Zurich is more expensive than Pokkara. You can also add an intensifier here. Pokkara is much less expensive than Zurich. Zurich is much more expensive than Pokkara. Or you could use a lot more. Zurich is a lot more expensive than Pokkara. If there's not such a big difference, you could use the word slightly. Zurich is slightly more expensive than New York. Or a little. Zurich is a little more expensive. In informal English, we would say a little bit instead of slightly. It's a little bit more expensive. But if you want to sound more formal, you can use slightly.

Okay, your turn. How about Kuzko? You could do the same thing and say Kuzko is more expensive than Pokkara. And you could also say, by how much? We could use twice as much. Kuzko is twice as expensive as Pokkara. And then how much more expensive is Zurich than Kuzko? Zurich is four times as expensive as Kuzko. Or just Zurich is four times as expensive. So those are various ways to compare two things. You can also use the superlative. Pokkara is the least expensive. Zurich is the most expensive. Here's some other possibilities with superlatives. Zurich is the most expensive. The cost in Zurich is the highest. The cost in Pokkara is the lowest. And if you want to intensify this, you can use an expression like by far. Of course, an easy way to talk about the cities and the chart is to use the verb cost. It costs less to stay in Pokkara. Zurich costs the most.

So let's go back to the tours and spending chart to talk in more detail about comparisons with verbs. Instead of using the name of the country, China ranks first, et cetera, let's use tourists or people from China as the subjects. And the verb spend, or in this case, past tense, spent. So you could say, Chinese tourists spent more abroad than tourists from the US. And about Brazil, you could say, tourists from Brazil spent less than tourists from China. And again, you can make it stronger or weaker by saying much more or slightly more. You can also use the superlative when you're just considering one group compared to all the rest. Now, using the same sentence, let's rank again. US tourists spent the second highest amount. German tourists accounted for the third highest spending, et cetera. You can also use words like twice as much or half as much. We've talked about ranking and comparing how different things are. When you talk about similarity or close similarity, you may use expressions like these.