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The original question I posted on StackOverflow. I think it's more mathematically inclined so I posted it here again. In terms of math.

There's a class of students. Each students has a score between 0 and 300 (gaussian, with some known average and standard deviation). I need to find classes of marks (like 0-100, 101-125, 126-140, 141-160, 161-175, 176-200, 201-300) such that:

  • The number of classes is minimum
  • The number of students in each class is minimum

How do I go about doing this? Is this a standard problem? Also, is it possible to prove that only this set of classes will have the above property.

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    I remember this book tackles the problem of choosing a binning optimally: [All of non-parametric statistics](http://www.amazon.com/All-Nonparametric-Statistics-Springer-Texts/dp/0387251456).2010-12-01
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    @Raskolnikov: Thanks! I'll try to get that book.2010-12-01

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