18.4 13.7 7.2 9.4 10.5 5.0 12.9

About the same percentage of the boys and of the girls (near 60 per
cent) is represented in Table VII. The girls have an advantage over the
boys of about 8 per cent for those belonging to the group with no
failures, and of about 1 per cent for the group with seven or more
failures.

No unconditional conclusion seems justified by this table. In the first
year's record of failures there are good grounds for the promise of
later performance. We may safely say that those who do not fail the
first year are much less likely to fail later, and that if they do fail
later, they have less accumulation of failures. Yet some of this group
have many failures after the first year, and others who have several
failures the first year have none subsequently. Generally, however, the
later accumulations are in almost direct ratio to the earlier record,
and the later non-failures are in inverse ratio to the debits of the
first year.

5. THE PROGNOSIS OF FAILURES BY THE SUBJECT SELECTION

From the distribution of failures by school subjects as presented in
Chapter II, this will seem to be the easiest and almost the surest of
all the factors thus far considered to employ for a prognosis of
failure. For of all pupils taking Latin we may confidently expect an
average of a little less than one pupil in every five to fail each
semester. For the entire number taking mathematics, the expectation of
failure is an average of about one in six for each semester. German
comes next, and for each semester it claims for failure on the average
nearly one pupil in every seven taking it. Similarly French claims for
failure one in every nine; history, one in every ten; English and
business subjects, less than one in every twelve. It will be noted that
the average on a semester basis is employed in this part of the
computation. Consequently, it is not the same as saying that such a
percentage of pupils fail at some time, in the subject. The pupil who
fails four times in first year mathematics is intentionally regarded
here as representing four failures. Likewise, the pupil who completes
four years of Latin without failure represents eight successes for the
subject in calculating these percentages. Every recorded failure for
each pupil is thus accounted for.

It was also noted in Chapter II that the percentages of the total
failures run higher in mathematics, Latin, history, and science, for
the gr