14 Carl C. Engberg 



the rapid growth of the numerator, as compared with the 

 denominator of the fraction ^ 



for large vahies of jnr is sufficient even to destroy the vaUie of 

 the table, it is sheer folly to fool with ten-place logarithms. Mr. 

 Elderton would have conferred a much greater benefit on bio- 

 metricians had he put less time on the "small differences in the 

 eleventh place," and more on the securing of an absolute measure 

 of the probability.^ 



This paper has not been written in a fault-finding spirit by a 

 detractor of the new science of biometry, but by a teacher of the 

 science, in the hope of doing something to help reverse the 

 popular process of swallowing the camel, but straining at the 

 gnat. 



^A measure of this probability, which takes no account of the variability 

 of an object, is of no vahie whatsoever. 



lOO 



