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Hereditary Genius
19
Scale of merit among the men who obtain mathematical honours at Cambridge.
The results of two years are thrown into a single table.
The total number of marks obtainable in each year was 17,000.
Number of marks obtained by
candidates.
Number of candidates in the two
years, taken together, who obtained
those marks.
Under 500
24¹
500 to 1,000
74
1,000 to 1,500
38
1,500 to 2,000
21
2,000 to 2,500
11
2,500 to 3,000
8
3,000 to 3,500
11
3,500 to 4,000
5
4,000 to 4,500
2
4,500 to 5,000
1
5,000 to 5,500
3
5,500 to 6,000
1
6,000 to 6,500
0
6,500 to 7,000
0
7,000 to 7,500
0
7,500 to 8,000
1
200
The precise number of marks obtained by the senior wrangler in the more
remarkable of these two years was 7,634; by the second wrangler in the
same year, 4,123; and by the lowest man in the list of honours, only 237.
Consequently, the senior wrangler obtained nearly twice as many marks as
the second wrangler, and more than thirty-two times as many as the lowest
man. I have received from another examiner the marks of a year in which
the senior wrangler was conspicuously eminent.
1
I have included in this table only the first 100 men in each year. The omitted residue is too
small to be important. I have omitted it lest, if the precise numbers of honour men were stated,
those numbers would have served to identify the years. For reasons already given, I desire to
afford no data to serve that purpose.
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