The "Hot Hand" IS Real - Classic Fallacy Debunked

Probability and statistics rarely get this kind of attention. But this story is special. It’s about debunking a long-held statistics result that itself was about debunking sports lore.

A 1985 study found that basketball players do not have a "hot hand." That is, players don't go on hot streaks or cold streaks. Our impression they do became known as the "hot hand fallacy."

A new working paper now says the "hot hand" actually exists--the "hot hand fallacy" is actually a fallacy! The paper claims the 1985 paper made a subtle statistical mistake. This video gives the intuition about the paper and why its argument appears to be sound.

Blog post: http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/201...

Papers cited

Miller, Joshua Benjamin and Sanjurjo, Adam, Surprised by the Gambler’s and Hot Hand Fallacies? A Truth in the Law of Small Numbers (September 15, 2015). IGIER Working Paper #552. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2627354 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2627354

Gilovich, Thomas; Tversky, A.; Vallone, R. (1985). "The Hot Hand in Basketball: On the Misperception of Random Sequences." http://www.researchgate.net/publicati...

Further reading

Rinott, Yosef and Bar-Hillel, Maya, Comments on a ‘Hot Hand’ Paper by Miller and Sanjurjo (2015) (September 6, 2015). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2642450 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2642450

Wall Street Journal http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hot-h...

Andrew Gelman http://andrewgelman.com/2015/07/09/he...

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