Florence Nightingale is most remembered as a pioneer of nursing and a reformer of hospital sanitation methods. For most of her ninety years, Nightingale pushed for reform of the British military health-care system and with that the profession of nursing started to gain the respect it deserved. Unknown to many, however, was her use of new techniques, of statistical analysis, such as during the Crimean War when she plotted the incidence of preventable deaths in the military. She developed a method to prevent the needless deaths caused by unsanitary conditions and the need for reform. With her analysis, Florence Nightingale revolutionized the idea that social phenomena could be objectively measured and subjected to mathematical analysis. She was an innovator in the collection, interpretation, and display of statistics.
Florence Nightingale’s two greatest life achievements-pioneering of nursing and the reform of hospitals-were amazing considering that most Victorian women of her age group did not attend universities or pursue professional careers. It was her father, William Nightingale, who believed women, especially his children, should get an education. So Nightingale and her sister learned Italian, Latin, Greek, history, and mathematics. She in particular received excellent early preparation in mathematics.
During Nightingale’s time at Scutari, she collected data and systematized record-keeping practices. Nightingale was able to use the data as a tool for improving city and military hospitals. Nightingale’s calculations of the death rate showed that with an improvement of sanitary methods, deaths would decrease. In February, 1855, the death rate at the hospital was 42.7 percent of the cases treated. When Nightingale’s sanitary reform was implemented, the death rate declined. Nightingale took her statistical data and represented them graphically.
As Nightingale demonstrated, statistics provided an organized way of learning and lead to improvements in medical and surgical practices. She also developed a Model Hospital Statistical Form for hospitals to collect and generate consistent data and statistics. She became a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society in 1858 and an honorary member of the American Statistical Association in 1874. Karl Pearson acknowledged Nightingale as a "prophetess" in the development of applied statistics.
What does this passage talk about Nightingale（）
A. As a pioneer of nursing
B. As a reformer of hospital sanitation methods
C. As a successful woman
D. As a innovator of statistical analysis in hospitals
参考答案：D
解析：
文章主旨题；考生在阅读文章之后，对文章内容有了整体的宏观把握才能正确解答这个题目，Nightingale是部分考生可能知道的著名的医护人员南丁格尔，由她的名字命名的奖项用来奖励世界范围内在医疗护理领域做出贡献和成就的医护人员；但本文不是在谈论这个众人皆知的事实，在引导性地提到这些成就之后，文章转而提出了本文将对Nightingale进行讨论和关注的切入点，文章的第一段有这样一句话“unknown to many，however，was hei use of new techniques of statistical analysis”，这是很多人不知道的事情，但这正是本文要讨论的领域，也就是Nightingale在数字统计领域的贡献，和对于这种技术在医疗上的应用，所以D选项正确地认识到了这一点，是我们的答案；A和B选项分别指出了人们熟知Nightingale的两大理由，C更是脱离本文的主观臆测，都是不正确的。