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 with the simplest uniform scheme in order to exclude all
arbitrariness, and therefore considered the mere average of all the
grades as the expression of the experimental result.
With this average rank list, we compared the practical results of the
telephone company after three months had passed. These three months
had been sufficient to secure at least a certain discrimination
between the best, the average, and the unfit. The result of this
comparison was on the whole satisfactory. First, the skeptical
telephone company had mixed with the class a number of women who had
been in the service for a long while and had even been selected as
teachers in the telephone school. I did not know, in figuring out the
results, which of the participants in the experiments these
particularly gifted outsiders were.
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