Using the bell curve in performance evaluation

Many organizations prefer to fit the performance ratings distribution into a bell curve.

What's a bell curve?

The bell curve represents the normal distribution in statistics. Performance ratings fitted into a bell curve looks as follows:

Using the bell curve in performance evaluation

The normal distribution implies that when considering a large number of data points, most values will tend towards the average and a small percentage of very high and very low numbers. For example, if you conduct a poll of people to capture their physical fitness, you might find a large number of people will be averagely fit, while some will be very fit, and some will ...

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