众所周知，在考研英语真题中，文章多来源于The Economist(经济学人)、Times (时代周刊)、Scientific American (科学美国人)等国外杂志、报刊。这些杂志、报刊被称为同源外刊。The Economist中的一篇名为《令人沮丧的冲刺》的文章从成为结构、表达方式都与真题相近，吸引了都教授的眼球，下面就带各位2016考研学子来学习一下。
Athletic prowess is not all that is being tested at this year's Olympic games. There will also be teams of econometricians battling it out to predict how many medals will be won by the hostnation.
Over the years economists have deployed all sorts of mental gymnastics in their search for a model that can reliably forecast Olympic winners. Initial expectations that medal tallies would be closely correlated with the population and per-capita wealth of a country were soon dashed. The models leapt over the hurdle of statistical significance only when a third variable was added—how many medals the country won last time—but this did not add much by way ofexplanation.
Apart from the persistence of good (or bad) performance from one Olympiadto the next, thedismal scientists hopped, skipped and jumped to two otherstatistically significant results. First, there was a“Soviet effect”, whereby the planned economies of the former communist bloc tended to outperform, presumably due to forcing talented youngsters to specialise and pumping them full of steroids . This effect began to fall with the Berlin Wall.
Second, the host nation tends to win more medals than it does at any other time. Why it does so is unclear, as is the exact size of the “host effect”—which is why, for economists, predicting how many medals Britain will bag is the equivalent of winning the 100-metre dash. Emily Williams, the torchbearer for the Tuck School of Business team that won the medal-forecasting gold last time with 95% accuracy, tips Britain's athletes to win 62 medals (25 of them gold), up from 47 four years earlier in Beijing. That would be a record haul for Britain, and place it fourthoverall, behind America (103), China (94,down from 100 when it hosted), and Russia (67).
By contrast, PricewaterhouseCoopers thinks Britain will win 54 medals, and Daniel Johnson of Colorado College, another veteran forecaster, actually thinks Britain will win fewer medals at home than it did four years ago in Beijing(down by two to 45). The new comer to the fieldis Kevin Daly, an economist at Goldman Sachs, who calculates that on average the host nation of an Olympics wins 54% more medals than usual. Taking Britain's 47 last time as “usual”, that would translate into a whopping 72 medals in London. We shall soon find out which, if any, of these dismal scientists is on the right track.
文章导读：四年一届的奥运会一直是众人眼中的焦点，哪个国家会获得更多的奖牌也成为了一些经济学家研究的方向。猜猜他们中谁会成为奥运预测的呢?
文章结构：段引入主题，说明奥运会不仅是运动员们竞技的场地，也是经济学家们比赛预测东道主数量的场地。第二段说经济学家们想找出一个比较可靠的模式来预测数。第三段讲解个具有统计学意义的预测模式是“苏联效应”，第四段讲的是第二个具有统计学意义的预测模式是“东道主效应”，第五段讲的是不同的经济学家对2012年奥运会东道主国英国获得的奖牌数给出了不同的预测。
核心词汇：prowess 英勇，超凡技术
deploy 部署，展开
per-capita 人均的，每人的
bloc 集团的
equivalent 同意义的，等价的
whopping 巨大的，天大的
长难句精析：Why it does so is unclear, as is the exact size of the “host effect”—which is why, for economists, predicting how many medals Britain will bag is the equivalent of winning the 100-metre dash.
【翻译】就像我们从无知晓“东道主效应”到底有多大影响力一样，为什么主办国会赢得更多奖牌还不甚明了——这就是为什么对于经济学家来说，预测英国会收多少枚奖牌如囊就像赢得了百米冲刺一样具有重大意义。
【解析】这句话的主句是一个主语从句Why it does so is unclear, as is the exact size of the “host effect”是一个由as引导的状语从句，表示“就像……”，不过这个从句是一个倒装句，从句中的谓语动词is被提到主语前。后面破折号链接的which从句是一个倒装句，从句中的谓语动词is被提到主语前，后面破折号链接的which从句是一个定语从句，其中which指代前面的Why it does so is unclear , as is the exact size of the “host effect ”。在which引导的从句中，which 做主语，系动词is做谓语，表语是由why引导的一个从句。
通过都教授的讲解，各位考生是不是也觉得这篇文章值得一学了呢，那就快快将文章精髓掌握起来吧。预祝各位考生备考顺利，取得理想佳绩!
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