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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 9^4= 



dent hours done in all subjects in the college 

 during a semester. Then the quotient of "^{nh) 

 by A yields a percentage, p, that expresses the 

 numerical demand for this special subject by 

 the students, on the assumption that there is 

 freedom of election of studies. Various local 

 considerations apart from the nature of the 

 subject are often operative in determining the 

 student's election; such as the personal popu- 

 larity of the professor and the reputation of 

 his courses for ease or difficulty. English, for 

 example, may be a " soft snap " under one pro- 

 fessor and a formidable stumbling block under 

 another. The evils connected with freedom 

 of election, especially for freshmen and sopho- 

 mores, are increasingly appreciated by edu- 

 cators; so that the assumption of unlimited 

 freedom is now, happily, not quite warranted. 



for a semester. If the value of p for a selected 

 subject is found in eighteen or twenty differ- 

 ent colleges, the average of these values may 

 be expressed by P. This average will of 

 course be affected with enough uncertainty to 

 be expressed as an- integer. Thus, if the 

 numerical popularity of French comes out as 

 8.74, and of physics as 4.37, the corresponding 

 percentages would be taken as 9 and 4, re- 

 spectively; indicating that out of the work 

 done in these colleges about 9 per cent, may 

 be expected to be in French, and about 4 per 

 cent, in physics; or that the popularity of 

 French is more than double that of physics, 

 though the exact numerical results, 8.74 and 

 4.37, would seem to indicate an exact ratio of 

 2 to 1, which has to be taken with some grains 

 of allowance. 



TABLE OF PERCENTAGES 



Ghoup I.: 



Greek 



Xatin 



Germanic Languages . 

 Romance Languages . . 

 24.50 



Gboop II. 



English 



History 



Political Science 



Economics 



Philosophy 



Bible 



46.78 



Group III 



Mathematics 



Astronomy 



Physics 



Chemistry 



Biology 



Geology 



• 28.72 

 100.00 



But the student who aims at a bachelor's de- 

 gree finds himself often put to the necessity 

 of choosing between what he regards as evils. 

 By taking an average of such elections in a 

 considerable number of colleges the personal 

 element is to some extent eliminated. 



The percentage, p, is obviously a rate, sub- 

 stantially the same for an annual session as 



In the accompanying table these integral 

 percentages are given in the middle column, 

 as the result of studying Dean Ferry's tables. 

 To show the range of variation the maximum 

 and minimum values of p are additionally 

 tabulated, along with the names of the cor- 

 responding institutions. Thus, the popularity 

 of Greek is greatest at Yale and least at Wis- 



