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66   Life and Letters of Francis Galton

reached by Galton in this chapter are, I think, on the whole correct, but his handling of " broad categories " by means of percentages, in particular when no probable errors of the percentages are provided, is not to the modern statistician very conclusive. I think it would be labour well spent, should the opportunity arise, to work through his data afresh. Meanwhile we may arrange rather differently his tabulations and consider what flows from them. He tells us that he found it difficult to separate music from drawing, and finally classed both into a single group, the " artistic." Thinking also that parents were likely to overestimate the artistic capacity of young children, he excluded all but adults. Thus in the parental table the data chiefly refer to members of the second and third generations.

The first table I have deduced from Galton's data is that for Husband and Wife. It contains 894 couples and gives a percentage of 28 for males and of 32 for females with artistic temperament. The probable error of the difference 4 of these percentages is 1.46, or the difference is about 2.7 times its probable error, it may therefore be just significant. Galton concludes that

"Part of this female superiority is doubtless to be ascribed to the large share that music and drawing occupy in the education of women, and to the greater leisure that most girls have, or take, for amusing themselves. If the artistic gifts of men and women are naturally the same, as the experience of schools where music and drawing are taught apparently shows it to be, the small difference observed in favour of women in adult life would be a measure of the smallness

of the effect of education compared with that of natural talent." (p. 156.)

I should not have thought the experience of art schools was in favour of the equality of artistic gifts in the two sexes. Galton's data really tell us nothing as to the grade of artistic faculty in the two sexes, as for this we require grouping in at least three categories. But my impression is that a larger proportion of the prizes and studentships fbr creative work still goes to the men, even in those schools where the women are in a majority.

Assortative Mating in Artistic Faculty.

Husband

Assuming the artistic faculty to be a continuous normal variate, we find from the above table the coefficient of correlation between Husband and Wife to be no less than •2418 ± '0376. This value for the mating of like with like for a mental temperament is singularly in accord with the intensity of assortative mating for physical characters *. It denotes a resemblance between

* Stature, •2804 + •0189; Span, •1989 ± •0204; Forearm, •1977 ± •0205. Health as measured by Duration of Life Wensleydale and Wharfedale, •2200 ± •0244; Oxfordshire, •2500 ± •0211; Society of Friends, •1999 ± •0212. See Biometrika, Vol. tr, pp. 373 and 487.

w

 
 

Artistic

Non-Artistic

Totals

Artistic ...

107 {80}

179 {206}

286

Non-Artistic

143 {170}

465 {438}

608

Totals   I

250

644

894


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