Is Lord Sugar a psychic octopus?

During the World Cup last year, a psychic octopus rose to fame by correctly predicting the outcome of eight football matches. Despite the relatively low probability of this happening by chance, most people are content to believe that the octopus was just guessing.

Does Young Apprentice work in the same way? Harry M has now been in the boardroom on the losing team six times out of six. Is it fair to conclude that he's the weakest contestant?

Perhaps he is, though he's had some notable and impressive moments. Yet given that the teams are regularly mixed up, is it not inevitable – or, at least, not unlikely – that one person would find themselves on the losing team every week simply by chance?

And does the winning team always win because they're the best? What role does randomness play? There seems to be a lot of post hoc ergo propter hoc analysis in the boardroom. James made great play of the fact that his team found a pocket watch at a considerably cheaper price than the opposition. But might that not have been more luck than judgement? As Zara countered, the watch she bought was the cheapest of the ones she saw; indeed it was cheapest by a large margin.

If the World Cup's octopus was lucky rather than psychic, might not Harry M be unlucky rather than a weak contestant?

More formal analyses on similar lines to the ones I'm suggesting here have been done in the sphere, for example, of investment management. There is evidence to suggest that many apparently successful fund managers may merely be just consistently lucky.