Intelligent social signaling is another possible explanation. He’s 16, after all. On the other hand, anyone who’s giving out or requesting confidence intervals at age 16 is probably not too concerned with social signalling, or else is really bad at it.
It’s a perfect social signal. It’s costly in that it shows his nerdiness to everyone, but the actual level of nerdiness is impressive to everyone who values nerdiness.
Less-than-sincere modesty is probably the culprit for missing the interval.
Intelligent social signaling is another possible explanation. He’s 16, after all. On the other hand, anyone who’s giving out or requesting confidence intervals at age 16 is probably not too concerned with social signalling, or else is really bad at it.
It’s a perfect social signal. It’s costly in that it shows his nerdiness to everyone, but the actual level of nerdiness is impressive to everyone who values nerdiness.
. . . or maybe it’s just the manifestation of Impostor Syndrome.
What I was about to write. See also Yvain underestimating his exam results, people giving very low confidence in the calibration question in the last survey but actually getting it right, etc.