Highlights from Day15

Hunting for other hints, he noticed that his team had captured information about which internet browser employees had used when they logged in to apply for their jobs. On a whim, he tested whether that choice might be related to quitting. He didn’t expect to find any correlation, assuming that browser preference was purely a matter of taste. But when he looked at the results, he was stunned: Employees who used Firefox or Chrome to browse the Web remained in their jobs 15 percent longer than those who used Internet Explorer or Safari.

1.hunt for xx hints：hunt表示捕猎，寻找，hint表示迹象，用这两个“小词”表示“寻找…迹象”非常生动，又同时押了韵。

2.capture：这个词原意表示俘虏，虏获，后引申为采集（数据等），经常与data连用，表示记录/采集数据。

例句：The data is captured by an optical scanner. 该数据是通过光学扫描仪采集的。

3.on a whim：whim表示突发的念头，一时兴致，a sudden feeling that you would like to do or have something, especially when there is no important or good reason.

on a whim为固定搭配，表示一时心血来潮，比如说：I didn’t leave just on a whim (=for no good reason) . 我不是一时心血来潮离开的。

4.a matter of taste：表示个人喜好，a matter of xx属于固定用法，表示是xx的事情而不是别的，比如a matter of fact. taste除了口味，还有一个意思是喜好，偏好，the kind of things that someone likes，可以用它来替换preference等词。

比如说：He asked about my taste in music. 他问我喜欢什么音乐。

5.stunned：这个形容词是由stun这个动词演变而来，stun表示震惊，而stunned表示震惊的，同时它的另一个形式stunning则表示令人惊奇的/非常漂亮的。

stunned可以用来替换shocked，surprised等词。

例句：He looked completely stunned. 他看上去完全惊呆了。

Thinking it was a coincidence, Housman ran the same analysis for absences from work. The pattern was the same: Firefox and Chrome users were 19 percent less likely to miss work than Internet Explorer and Safari fans.

6.run a analysis：这里表达做分析并没有使用do或者conduct，而是用了run这个比较口语的小词，值得注意。

7.fans：通常我们在表达“使用xx的人”会想到user/who use…等等，这个fans在这里更加生动和生活化，更有偏好用xx的含义。