The guesses in most contests won’t be normally distributed, period, so they won’t be normally distributed around the true number. They’d be closer to log-normal or some such distribution, I would guess.
Long ago, I looked at some data on people’s guesses in probability calibration exercises. Exercises like: how many eggs do Americans consume annually—write down a number such that you judge it X% probable the true number is less than or equal, and (100-X)% probable it is greater. I vaguely recall some such thing about the distribution of guesses. A very large number of guesses were many orders of magnitude too low, as well.
The guesses in most contests won’t be normally distributed, period, so they won’t be normally distributed around the true number. They’d be closer to log-normal or some such distribution, I would guess.
Sounds reasonable. How do you know this / what do you base that on?
Long ago, I looked at some data on people’s guesses in probability calibration exercises. Exercises like: how many eggs do Americans consume annually—write down a number such that you judge it X% probable the true number is less than or equal, and (100-X)% probable it is greater. I vaguely recall some such thing about the distribution of guesses. A very large number of guesses were many orders of magnitude too low, as well.