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America's GDP was first estimated to have fallen at an annual rate of 3.8% in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared with the previous three months.
在2008年，初步预测，与前个三月相比，美国第四季度GDP增长率下降将3.8%。
That was eventually revised to a decline of more than 8%,
最终该数据修正为下降超过8%，
in part because statisticians' guesses for some manufacturing inventories for the month of December were too optimistic.
部分原因是因为统计学家对12月份制造业库存资产的猜测过于乐观。
During the pandemic, these problems have been turned up a notch. Many businesses have temporarily stopped trading and thus responding to surveys.
在疫情时期，这些问题已经上升了一个级别。很多企业暂停贸易，以应对调查。
The sectors of the economy most affected by lockdowns, such as education, leisure and hospitality,
包括教育、休闲和酒店业在内的经济部门受封锁影响最大，
often have the longest lags in reporting, making early estimates especially unreliable. In some cases, collecting data is impossible.
通常他们报告的滞后期也最长，这使得早期预测尤不可靠。在一些情况中，收集数据是不可能的。
In Britain a survey of travellers at airports and ports, which helps measure activity accounting for 20% of its trade in services, was halted in March.
在英国，一项针对机场和港口游客的调查在3月被叫停，该调查可以帮助衡量占其服务贸易20%的经济活动。
In response, statisticians are making quick fixes. In America the output of public-education services is usually estimated using teachers' pay.
统计学家门通过进行快速修补做出回应。在美国，公共教育服务的产出通常是根据教师们的收入做出预测的。
But statisticians have weakened the link between pay and measured activity to reflect the fact that, though teachers continue to receive salaries,
但是统计学家们弱化了工资和可测量活动之间的联系，以此反映出这样一个事实，即虽然老师继续领工资，
students have missed hours of instruction. Others are using conversations with companies, statistical techniques and guesswork to fill in gaps.
但学生们却已经缺课很多个小时了。其他人则利用和公司对话、统计技术以及臆测来填补空白。
Many are also looking to make more drastic changes by incorporating "realtime" data.
还有很多统计学家希望通过合并“实时”数据来做出更大的改变。
Timely figures ranging from restaurant reservations to prices on Amazon are already widely used by private-sector economists.
私营部门的经济学家已经广泛使用餐厅预订和亚马逊商品价格等实时数据了。
Institutional inertia and tight budgets had led many statistics offices to shun them; now they have little choice but to experiment.
制度上的惰性以及紧缩的预算导致很多统计局回避这些数据；现在他们除了进行尝试，别无选择。
A handful of those in the European Union are using credit-card data to help measure GDP.
一些欧盟国家的统计局正在使用信用卡数据帮助衡量GDP。
In place of the survey of international travellers, the ONS is looking at passenger numbers from the aviation regulator,
ONS正在研究航空监管机构、轮渡以及欧洲之星车站的乘客人数和气象数据
ferries and the Eurostar-as well as meteorological data. Other statisticians are scraping web pages.
以此替代针对国际游客的调查。其他数据分析师正在抓取网页。
Things are tough now, but the wonks could emerge from the pandemic with a better understanding of how the economy really works.
现在情况仍然艰难，但学院派们可能会摆脱疫情的影响，对经济真正的运作方式有一个更好的认识。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
