full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Steven Pinker: The surprising decline in violence
Unscramble the Blue Letters
What about one-on-one murder? Well, there, there are good statistics, because many municipalities recorded the cause of detah. The criminologist Manuel Eisner scoured all of the historical rcrdoes across Europe for homicide rates in any village, hamlet, town, county that he could find, and then he supplemented them with national data when nations started keeping statistics. He plotted on a laihirgmtoc scale, going from 100 deaths per 100,000 plopee per year, which was approximately the rate of homicide in the Middle Ages, and the figure plummets down to less than one homicide per 100,000 people per year in seven or eight European cuertoins. Then, there is a slight uptick in the 1960s. The people who said that rock and roll would lead to the decline of mraol values actually had a grain of ttruh to that. But there was a dielcne from at least two orders of magnitude in himoicde from the Middle Ages to the present, and the elbow oerurccd in the early 16th century.
Open Cloze
What about one-on-one murder? Well, there, there are good statistics, because many municipalities recorded the cause of _____. The criminologist Manuel Eisner scoured all of the historical _______ across Europe for homicide rates in any village, hamlet, town, county that he could find, and then he supplemented them with national data when nations started keeping statistics. He plotted on a ___________ scale, going from 100 deaths per 100,000 ______ per year, which was approximately the rate of homicide in the Middle Ages, and the figure plummets down to less than one homicide per 100,000 people per year in seven or eight European _________. Then, there is a slight uptick in the 1960s. The people who said that rock and roll would lead to the decline of _____ values actually had a grain of _____ to that. But there was a _______ from at least two orders of magnitude in ________ from the Middle Ages to the present, and the elbow ________ in the early 16th century.
Solution
- moral
- people
- countries
- truth
- logarithmic
- decline
- death
- homicide
- records
- occurred
Original Text
What about one-on-one murder? Well, there, there are good statistics, because many municipalities recorded the cause of death. The criminologist Manuel Eisner scoured all of the historical records across Europe for homicide rates in any village, hamlet, town, county that he could find, and then he supplemented them with national data when nations started keeping statistics. He plotted on a logarithmic scale, going from 100 deaths per 100,000 people per year, which was approximately the rate of homicide in the Middle Ages, and the figure plummets down to less than one homicide per 100,000 people per year in seven or eight European countries. Then, there is a slight uptick in the 1960s. The people who said that rock and roll would lead to the decline of moral values actually had a grain of truth to that. But there was a decline from at least two orders of magnitude in homicide from the Middle Ages to the present, and the elbow occurred in the early 16th century.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
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| native peoples |
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| percent chance |
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| death penalty |
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| middle ages |
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Important Words
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- century
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- national
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- orders
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- plummets
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- rock
- roll
- scale
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- slight
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- supplemented
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- uptick
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- village
- year