Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/557

Rh Let us next turn to the variations and extremes as related to the final average. The variations here expressed are necessarily somewhat high and should not be confounded with mean variations of individual cases, because they represent merely the variations of averages of groups, each one of which stands for a particular set of conditions and thus tends to exaggerate some one or more items at the expense of the rest. Under these conditions we should expect just what the table shows—that the hours for sleep and meals, which are little affected by course or class, are the most constant, the variation being but 3 per cent, for sleep and 8 per cent, for meals. In the case of university work, we may note that there is considerable variation in the distribution of the type of work, e. g., 67 per cent, for laboratories, 139 per cent, for shop and field, but that the final outcome is fairly constant, being slightly under 10 per cent, variation.

When we glance at the individual extremes many of the figures are surprising. Thus, while we know that many students give no time to laboratory or shop work or to self-support, we should scarcely anticipate that there are students who give no time (at least for this week) to outside study, and others who have no lectures or recitations. It is equally unexpected to find that some students give more time by an hour or more a day to a single phase of work, like laboratory or shop work, than the average student gives to all phases of university work combined. The highest lecture time is that, of course, of a student who is attending as an auditor several courses in which he is not registered. With regard to amusement, the chief interest lies in the fact that four students, two in medicine, a freshman in civil engineering and a junior in electrical engineering—report no time for amusement, while periods aggregating only an hour a week, i. e., about ten minutes a day, are reported by several others. Similarly, we find six students who gave no time at all to any form of physical exercise, notwithstanding the temptations of fine skating.

But it is with regard to meals that the extremes are most interesting. We have already noted that the average time is considerably below the time allotted. One student, a freshman in engineering, reports three and a half hours daily for meals; a sophomore in civil engineering reports 3.22 hours, and four students report three hours each. In other words, only six (less than seven tenths of one per cent.) give the time to meals recommended by President Eliot. But it is equally true that but few students give even the two hours recommended by President Schurman. Indeed, no group or class of students, women excluded, average even an hour and a half daily for meals, while the women students average but 1.55 hours.

This is the feature of the president's speech which, next to his advocacy of eleven hours for work, appears to have aroused the most