mance" (of child on tasks of known difficulty).

In this connection it may be well to take one of the scales for quality
of products and outline the steps to be followed in assigning scores,
making tabulations, and finding the medians of distributions of scores.

When the Hillegas scale is employed in measuring the quality of English
composition, it will be advisable to assign to each composition the
score of that sample on the scale to which it is nearest in merit or
quality. While some individuals may feel able to assign values
intermediate to those appearing on the Hillegas scale, the majority of
those persons who use this scale will not thereby obtain a more accurate
result, and the assignment of such intermediate values will make it
extremely difficult for any other person to make accurate use of the
results. To be exactly comparable, values should be assigned in exactly
the same manner.

The best result will probably be obtained by having each composition
rated several times, and if possible, by a number of different judges,
the paper being given each time that value on the Hillegas scale to
which it seems nearest in quality. The final mark for the paper should
be the median score or step (not the median point or the average point)
of all the scores assigned. For example, if a paper is rated five times,
once as in step number five (5.85), twice as in step number six (6.75),
and twice as in step number seven (7.72), it should be given a final
mark indicating that it is a number six (6.75) paper.

After each composition has been assigned a final mark indicating to what
sample on the Hillegas scale it is most nearly equal in quality, proceed
as follows:

Make a distribution of the final marks given to the individual papers,
showing how many papers were assigned to the zero step on the scale, how
many to step number one, how many to step number two, and so on for each
step of the scale. We may take as an example the distribution of scores
made by the pupils of the eighth grade at Butte, Montana, in May, 1914.

No. of papers 1 9 32 39 43 22 6 2
Rated at 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

All together there were 154 papers from the eighth grade, so that if
they were arranged in order according to their merit we might begin at
the poorest and count through 77 of them (n/2 = 154/2 = 77) to find the
median point, which would lie between the 77th and the 78th in quality.
If we begin wit