Incredibly interesting, but I can't resist nitpicking! The with extrapolating this to real life would be that it's making assumptions that are not realistic. F

Incredibly interesting, but I can't resist nitpicking! The with extrapolating this to real life would be that it's making assumptions that are not realistic. For instance it assumes infinite granularity in candidates. In other words the rating of a candidate can be from 0 to infinity instead of the granularity we really see things in which is going to be closer to 0-4 or very bad/bad/neutral/good/very good. It also assumes a normal distribution. Something that's perfectly reasonable for an unknown distribution, but in my experience the number of 'very good' candidates tends to be much larger than its equal but opposite 'very bad' end perhaps due to some sort of survivorship bias.