346 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



It described the character of the Philippine Islands and 

 people. The first five lines will suffice as a sample: 



(1) The Filipinos as a race are not vicious. / (2) Their 

 common crimes are. rather slight offenses, such as the 

 theft of articles of small value. / (3) Gambling is perhaps 

 the chief vice, / (4) and a Filipino will risk his last penny 

 on a cock fight / (5) or a horse race./ (6) Americans are apt 

 to think the Filipinos are lazy. / (7) This is partly true. / 

 (8) For centuries they have learn- 



The numbers and the oblique lines were not on the 

 learning sheets, and are inserted here merely to aid in 

 explaining the methods of grading employed later. The 

 students were given two and one-half minutes in which 

 to study the selection, and then reproduced as much of 

 it as they could in their own language immediately and 

 again a week later. The first is taken as a measure of 

 what was learned; the second, as a measure of what was 

 retained. The learning was with knowledge that the 

 reproductions would be called for. 



The selection was then divided into 36 " facts" or 

 ideas, as shown by the numbers and oblique lines in the 

 sample above, and the ratio of the number of facts which 

 each retained to the number which he had learned was 

 found. This is called the percentage of retention. The 

 group was then arranged in the order of the number of 

 units learned, and divided into quartiles. The results 

 for the different quartiles follow. The figures in the 

 second and third columns give the average number of 

 facts learned and retained respectively. The fourth 

 column gives the average ratios of retention to learning 

 by quartiles. 



RATIOS OF RETENTION TO LEARNING IN THE FIRST 

 SELECTION 



Rank of Av. learn- Av. reten- Av. p'c't. Standard 



quarters ing score tion score retained deviation 



1 25.5 22.2 88% 3.6 



2 19.1 15.3 80 6.0 



3 14.9 12.7 85 5.3 



4 9.1 7.9 88 5.5 



Avs. 17.1 14.5 85 5.1 



In general the four quartiles retained about the same 

 percentage of what they had learned, viz., from 80 to 



