2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/161259We show that the shifted rank, or srank, of any partition $λ$ with distinct parts equals the lowest degree of the terms appearing in the expansion of Schur's $Q_λ$ function in terms of power sum symmetric functions. This gives an affirmative answer to a conjecture of Clifford. As pointed out by Clifford, the notion of the srank can be naturally extended to a skew partition $λ/μ$ as the minimum number of bars among the corresponding skew bar tableaux. While the srank conjecture is not valid for skew partitions, we give an algorithm to compute the srank.25 pages, 7 figuresCombinatorics05E05, 20C25text