You’re not fired! Winning ‘Apprentice’ strategy revealed by statistician

A statistician at the University of Sheffield has revealed the best strategy for winning TV show The Apprentice following in-depth analysis of the background and performance of previous contestants. Researchers studied 159 hopefuls across ten series of the BBC One show, which returns to TV screens this Wednesday (14 October 2015), to find out which factors boost the chances of success and which are likely to get you fired by Lord Sugar. When it comes to the background of candidates, age is a crucial indicator of success, with both the oldest and youngest candidates more likely to be fired earlier in the process. All ten winners so far have been aged between 24 and 31. Gender and recent job history were not found to have any significant effect on a candidate's chances. An interesting shift in the factors deciding the winner is the effect of a candidate's academic qualifications. For the first six series, when the winner was given a £100,000 a year job as an 'apprentice' to Lord Sugar, more academically qualified contestants tended to perform less well, with Lord Sugar perhaps favouring streetwise hustlers in his own image.