Hmm… I would think that there are two forces at play here: 1) the ones who come first are not compared against any of the latter ones, so make a better impres

Hmm… I would think that there are two forces at play here: 1) the ones who come first are not compared against any of the latter ones, so make a better impression 2) the ones who come last are still in memory, especially if results are all tabulated in the end. So, if the above is true, and there is no guarantee that it is, I would have expected an inverted bell curve.