When I saw the graphs in the original article I immediately came to a different conclusion - that people with a given amount of skill have low confidence in their ability to gauge how skilled they are compared to an arbitrary group.
For example, if someone gave me (or you) a leetcode-style test, and told me I'd be competing against a sample picked from the general population, and ask me how well I did, I'd probably rate myself near the top with high confidence.
Conversely, if my competitors were skilled competitive coders, I'd put myself near the bottom, again with high confidence.
Now, if I had to compete with a different group, say my college classmates, or fellow engineers from a different department, I'd be in trouble, if I scored high, what does that mean? Maybe others scored even higher. Or if I couldn't solve half of the problems, maybe others could solve even less - point is I don't know.
In that case the reasonable approach for me would be to assume I'm in the 50th percentile, then adjust it a bit based on my feelings - which is basically what happened in this scenario, and would produce the exact same graph if everyone behaved like that.
No need to tell tall tales of humble prodigies and boastful incompetents.
For example, if someone gave me (or you) a leetcode-style test, and told me I'd be competing against a sample picked from the general population, and ask me how well I did, I'd probably rate myself near the top with high confidence.
Conversely, if my competitors were skilled competitive coders, I'd put myself near the bottom, again with high confidence.
Now, if I had to compete with a different group, say my college classmates, or fellow engineers from a different department, I'd be in trouble, if I scored high, what does that mean? Maybe others scored even higher. Or if I couldn't solve half of the problems, maybe others could solve even less - point is I don't know.
In that case the reasonable approach for me would be to assume I'm in the 50th percentile, then adjust it a bit based on my feelings - which is basically what happened in this scenario, and would produce the exact same graph if everyone behaved like that.
No need to tell tall tales of humble prodigies and boastful incompetents.