18 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXII. No. 809 



Dr. Ernst A. Bessey, of the Louisiana 

 State University, has accepted the professor- 

 ship of botany in the Michigan Agricultural 

 College, to succeed Dr. W. J. Beal, who has 

 resigned. 



Mr. Egbert H. Baker, assistant at Alle- 

 gheny Observatory, has been elected assistant 

 professor of astronomy at Brown University. 



Edmund H. Hollands, Ph.D. (Cornell), has 

 been appointed professor of philosophy in 

 Butler College, Indianapolis. Dr. Hollands 

 has been instructor in philosophy at Cornell 

 University and during this year has been act- 

 ing professor of philosophy at Hamilton Col- 

 lege. 



A new department of botany and forestry 

 has been established in the University of Mon- 

 tana. Dr. J. E. Kirkwood has been advanced 

 to the position of professor in charge. 



Mr. J. W. Eggleston, assistant in geology, 

 Harvard University, has been appointed as- 

 sistant professor of geology and mineralogy at 

 the School of" Mines and Metallurgy at Eolla, 

 Mo. 



DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE 

 THE RELIABILITY OP " MARKS " 



In connection with the comparison of marks 

 assigned by difierent examiners in astronomy, 

 published in Science for May 27, a somewhat 

 difierent experiment of my own in philosophy 

 may be of interest. The course in question 

 was based on Eucken's "Problem of Human 

 Life," and the class consisted of seventeen 

 young women. For each exercise some fifteen 

 pages of the text were assigned, and the stu- 

 dents came prepared to make a ten-minute 

 written summary of it. The object, of course, 

 was to see that they did the work, and every 

 student present handed in a paper, even 

 though it contained nothing but her name. 

 The students themselves took turns in mark- 

 ing these papers. It was understood that I 

 was to revise the marks; but, as it turned out, 

 this was not necessary. There were also four 

 tests of an hour each. I was myself to read 

 the papers from these, but actually only read 

 three of them. These tests were announced 

 at the beginning of the year, and the students 



knew when to expect them. I paid no atten- 

 tion to the marks handed in from time to 

 time by student-markers until the end of the 

 year, at which time I also read and marked 

 the papers from the three hour-tests. These 

 hour-tests, scattered throughout the term, took 

 the place of a final examination. 



The marks given by students were computed 

 as follows : The marker for the day marked 

 the papers excellent, good, fair, passable or 

 deficient, with or without a qualifying plus or 

 minus. Erom these I determined each stu- 

 dent's distance above or below the middle of 

 the class, and marked her anywhere from 

 + 8 to — 8 accordingly. I did not count 

 the mark which the marker gave herself. The 

 fourth column shows the algebraic sum of 

 these marks; the bracketed figure showing the 

 number of separate marks which are added 

 together to make this total. The first column 

 shows the student's standing in the hour-tests, 

 marked by me; and the third shows the fig- 

 ures from which this standing is derived. 

 These figures were actually obtained by as- 

 signing numerical values to my own marks 

 of E, G, F, etc., and then multiplying the 

 totals scored in a given test by the fraction 

 necessary to make the highest marks scored in 

 the three different tests equal. My marks 

 were given rather roughly and were not re- 

 vised. 



' Computed from the results of two teats by 

 adding 50 per cent, to the total. 



