Abstract: Evaluation of the course difficulty is the basis of a lot of works as follows: college students’ training scheme design, curriculum schedule arrangement and teachers’ workload evaluation. An evaluation method of the course difficulty based on paired comparison is proposed in this paper. This method contains questionnaire and data analysis. In questionnaire part, test subjects compare two courses and select out one considerably difficult course. The data analysis stage has three parts. Firstly, filter out the circle error data from survey data. Circle error data happens when course A is considered more difficult than course B, course B is considered more difficult than course C and course C is considered more difficult than course A. Secondly, check whether the test subjects, on average, have equal preference to the tested courses. Luckily, a strong agreement is obtained in this paper. Thirdly, sort and group the courses according to their difference in difficulty by the Friedman test, the Page test and the Hollander-Wolfe comparison method.

Key words: evaluation of the course difficulty, paired comparison, circle error, agreement