I have said that the only groups who have trouble speaking long enough are those who have nothing to say. I don't think anyone fit that category this time, but this is a fascinating correlation between the mark people got from their peers (out of 50) and the number of seconds they were over 8 minutes(which was the nominal time for a presentation.) It would seem that generally those who spoke longer seemd to impress the audience more.

I'm always curious whether order matters. The effect seems to be small but significant. (Or perhaps the most well-prepared people went earlier.)

Part of my reason for having peer marking as well as my own is that we may be looking for different things. That seems to be true.

Most people tend to mark good things quite generously. However there is a lot of difference in how people mark things they think are not so good. Thus the standard deviation of the mean is greater for the lower averages. (In other words, most people gave the best presentations a mark close to 50, whereas the worst mark for some people was close to 25 while for others it was more like 45.)

Part of the difference between my mark and the class mark may come from what we find interesting. My guess is that I define it more interms of the science, while most students think in terms of the way it is presented.