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THE. POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



and computing from it the difference between each subject's position for 

 interest in the elementary-school period (column 1) and its position 

 for ability in the same period (column 2), we have : 



Mathematics 



History 



Literature 



Science 



Music 



Drawing 



Other hand work 



These facts are repeated in the first column of Table 4. Similar facts 

 for this same individual, for the differences between the order for 

 interest and the order for ability in the high-school period and in the 

 college period are given in the second and third columns of Table 4. 



Table 4 



If at any period an individual has greatest ability in the subject 

 which is most interesting to him, next greatest ability in the next most 

 interesting subject, and so on, the sum of the seven differences for that 

 period will be zero. If the order of ability was as unlike as possible to 

 the order of interest this sum would be 24, and if the relation between 

 interest and ability was that of mere chance this sum would be 16. 

 Any quantity below 16 as the sum of a column in Table 4 then means 

 some positive relation or resemblance between the individual's degrees 

 of interest and his degrees of ability. 



For the hundred individuals studied this figure is on the average 

 approximately 5, being practically the same for the elementary-school 

 period, for the high-school period and for the college period. This 

 average result may be expressed as a coefficient of correlation of .88. 

 Nearly three fourths of the individuals show records between 2 and 8, 

 inclusive — that is, correlations of from .70 to .98. 



If, in the case of any individual, we add together the three ranka 

 for each subject in interest at the three periods and do likewise for its 

 ability-ranks, we have measures of the general order of the seven subjects 



