his last case of abnormal
carelessness stood quite isolated. On the whole, the number of
overlooked letters fluctuated between 5 and 60. If both results, those
of the crossed-out and those of the overlooked letters, are brought
into relation, we find that the best results were a case of 236
letters marked, with only 2 overlooked, and one of 257 marked, with 4
overlooked. The very interesting details as to the various types of
attention which we see in the distribution of mistakes over the six
minutes were not taken into our final table. The word experiments by
which we tested the intelligence showed that no one was able to
reproduce more than 22 of the 24 words. The smallest number of words
remembered was 7. The mistakes in the perception of distances
fluctuated between 1 and 14 millimeters; the time for the sorting of
the 48 cards, between, 35 and 58 seconds; the association-time for the
6 associated words taken together was between 9 and 21 seconds. The
pointing experiments could not be made use of in this first series, as
it was found that quite a number of participants were unable to
perform the act with the rapidity demanded.

Several ways were open to make mathematical use of these results. I
preferred the simplest way. I calculated the grade of the girls for
each of these achievements. The same candidate who stood in the 7th
place in the memory experiment was in the 15th place with reference to
the number of letters marked, in the 3rd place with reference to the
letters overlooked, in the 21st place with reference to the number of
word pairs which she had grasped, in the 11th place with reference to
the exactitude of space-perception, in the 16th place with reference
to the association-time, and in the 6th place with reference to the
time of sorting. As soon as we had all these independent grades, we
calculated the average and in this way ultimately gained a common
order of grading. It is evident that this kind of calculation contains
accidental factors, especially as a consequence of the fact that we
give equal value to every one of these results. It might be better,
for instance, to attribute a higher value to the attention experiment
or to the intelligence experiment. This could be done by multiplying
the results of some of these grades by 2 or by 3, which would bring
the high or low grade of a girl for a particular function to stronger
influence in the final result. But in this first trial I contented
myself