A Critical Study of the Summation-of-Difference-in-Rank Method of Determining Proficiency in Judging Dairy Products

Abstract

Student dairy product judges have been graded by the method of summing the differences between the ranks given by the students and those of official judges. The method is examined here by a study of the chance distribution of scores in the ranking of 7 samples in which the best possible score is 0 and the worst is 24. A score of 8 or less must be secured to give indication of real judging proficiency. Relatively good scores can be accidentally obtained in a sufficiently large number of instances to render the method of doubtful value.