杰克逊去世之日 博客圈最伤心的一天

爱思英语编者按：有没有可能分辨出我们到底有多高兴呢？答案是肯定的，因为美国的科学家已经发明出测量数百万博友快乐指数的方法，并发现迈克尔•杰克逊去世那天是博友们最伤心的日子之一，而美国大选之日则是他们四年来最开心的一天。

Is it possible to tell how happy we all are?

Yes, according to US scientists who have devised a way to measure the happiness of millions of bloggers -- and found Michael Jackson"s death was one of the saddest days while the U.S. election was the happiest in four years.

Peter Dodds and Chris Danforth, a mathematician and computer scientist from the Advanced Computing Center at the University of Vermont, have created a "sensor" to mine 2.3 million blogs and gather sentences beginning with "I feel" or "I am feeling." Each sentence is then given a happiness score from 1 to 9 depending on a point system allocated to 1,034 words. For example, "triumphant" averages 8.87 points, "paradise" 8.72, "pancakes" 6.08, and "suicide" 1.25.

They said this "hedonometer" showed that the US election day last November was the happiest day in four years with a spike in the word "proud" while the day of the "King of Pop"s" death was one of the unhappiest.

"The proliferation of personal online writing such as blogs gives us the opportunity to measure emotional levels in real time," they said in their report titled "Measuring the Happiness of Large-Scale Written Expression: Songs, Blogs, and Presidents."

Their study, reported this week in the Journal of Happiness Studies, involved gathering nearly 10 million sentences.

"Our method is only reasonable for large-scale texts, like what"s available on the Web. Any one sentence might not show much. There"s too much variability in individual expression," said Dodds.   更多信息请访问：http://www.24en.com/

The scientists said that although blog writers tend to be younger and more educated than average, they were broadly representative of the US population.    更多信息请访问：http://www.24en.com/

They were also writing in a natural environment where they were comfortable as opposed to other happiness studies were participants were put on the spot.

"They think they are communicating with friends but (since blogs are public), we"re just looking over their shoulders," said Danforth.

They said their results also ran contrary to recent social science data that suggested people basically feel the same at all ages of life.

Their method showed young teenagers are unhappiest with a disproportionate use of "sick," "hate," "stupid," "sad," "depressed," "bored," "lonely," "mad," and "fat." Then people get happier until they are old, when happiness drops off.

But the scientists said it was impossible to know what was really going on in people"s heads.

"Our study is a data exploration," said Danforth. "It"s not about developing a theory."