VOA标准英语2010年-Website of the Week - World Bank Data

Time again for our Website of the Week, when we showcase interesting and innovative¹ online destinations.

The World Bank lends money to promote development, and to help achieve its goals it collects a lot of data. For years, the World Bank has been one of the world's leading collectors of data. All kinds of information: life expectancy², literacy rates, unemployment, exports, water pollution — the list is nearly endless.

Now, a new World Bank website brings those numbers together in one place.

"The data website is the central platform for all of the development data from the Bank, and the focus of this is to make the data open, accessible, and searchable," explained World Bank spokesman Richard Fix.

The bank's data group has just launched data.worldbank.org, where you can see all the metrics for a given country, or compare different countries on the same indicator³.

"Social and health, education, to trade, the economy, environment. Data on all of these different topics for all countries, and in some cases going back as far as 1960," Fix said.

There are also maps and other tools, but Fix says the site's real strength is that users can download and manipulate the data, not just browse⁴ it passively.

"You get people who are quite handy with the systems and developing applications, and they use the data and mash-up the data with other pieces of data and raise questions that maybe haven't been raised before, or point to answers that we hadn't seen before."

World development indicators⁵ online at data.worldbank.org, or get the link to this and hundreds of other Websites of the Week from our site, voanews.com.

 

1 innovative   

adj.革新的，新颖的，富有革新精神的

参考例句：

• Discover an innovative way of marketing.发现一个创新的营销方式。
• He was one of the most creative and innovative engineers of his generation.他是他那代人当中最富创造性与革新精神的工程师之一。

2 expectancy   

n.期望，预期，（根据概率统计求得）预期数额

参考例句：

• Japanese people have a very high life expectancy.日本人的平均寿命非常长。
• The atomosphere of tense expectancy sobered everyone.这种期望的紧张气氛使每个人变得严肃起来。

3 indicator   

n.指标；指示物，指示者；指示器

参考例句：

• Gold prices are often seen as an indicator of inflation.黃金价格常常被看作是通货膨胀的指标。
• His left-hand indicator is flashing.他左手边的转向灯正在闪亮。

4 browse   

vi.随意翻阅，浏览；(牛、羊等)吃草

参考例句：

• I had a browse through the books on her shelf.我浏览了一下她书架上的书。
• It is a good idea to browse through it first.最好先通篇浏览一遍。

5 indicators   

（仪器上显示温度、压力、耗油量等的）指针( indicator的名词复数 )； 指示物； （车辆上的）转弯指示灯； 指示信号

参考例句：

• The economic indicators are better than expected. 经济指标比预期的好。
• It is still difficult to develop indicators for many concepts used in social science. 为社会科学领域的许多概念确立一个指标仍然很难。