The Myth of the Hot Hand - Mathematically Vindicated?

[Philadukie]

I don't pretend to fully understand the math behind it, but maybe some of our stats/math oriented posters would like to comment.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/10/hot_hands_in_basketball_are_real_new_analysis_show s.html

I've always thought hot hands exist, but I've learned to question over the years what I see with my eyes thanks to the stats folks on here!

[swood1000]

I don't pretend to fully understand the math behind it, but maybe some of our stats/math oriented posters would like to comment.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/10/hot_hands_in_basketball_are_real_new_analysis_show s.html

I've always thought hot hands exist, but I've learned to question over the years what I see with my eyes thanks to the stats folks on here!
I recently read Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. It was an awesome book that I highly recommend. He also asserted that the "hot hand" is a cognitive illusion:


The "fact" that players occasionally acquire a hot hand is generally accepted by players, coaches, and fans. The inference is irresistible: a player sinks three or four baskets in a row and you cannot help forming the causal judgment that this player is now hot, with a temporarily increased propensity to score. Players on both teams adapt to this judgment — teammates are more likely to pass to the hot scorer and the defense is more likely to double-team. Analysis of thousands of sequences of shots led to a disappointing conclusion: there is no such thing as a hot hand in professional basketball, either in shooting from the field or scoring from the foul line. Of course, some players are more accurate than others, but the sequence of successes and missed shots satisfies all tests of randomness. The hot hand is entirely in the eye of the beholders, who are consistently too quick to perceive order and causality in randomness. The hot hand is a massive and widespread cognitive illusion.

This was the only thing in the book that I thought he was wrong on, simply because I myself have experienced being "hot" and "cold" in sporting events, although he would say that feeling "hot" is an illusion caused by hitting the mark more frequently in a given period of time, but this can be expected to occur randomly to everyone. Still not buying that it is an illusion.

[uh_no]

I don't pretend to fully understand the math behind it, but maybe some of our stats/math oriented posters would like to comment.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/10/hot_hands_in_basketball_are_real_new_analysis_show s.html

I've always thought hot hands exist, but I've learned to question over the years what I see with my eyes thanks to the stats folks on here!

Interesting.

For the interested, here's the paper:
http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=0751141030000760691121021151120810 25125053040028048056123007120126003011091066003078 03501102804704906000402708407011607011910400907807 40290380270120900901000100920190620070810050261230 01119070114116089110100111067019120067029098002086 065006072003105027&EXT=pdf

will have to read later.

[Kedsy]

I don't pretend to fully understand the math behind it, but maybe some of our stats/math oriented posters would like to comment.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/10/hot_hands_in_basketball_are_real_new_analysis_show s.html

I've always thought hot hands exist, but I've learned to question over the years what I see with my eyes thanks to the stats folks on here!

I've always thought the original, seminal study was flawed on many levels. And I've always believed in the hot hand, even if it's spawned by what is essentially an illusion. If a player feels hot, he's more confident and less tight, and thus more likely to shoot with his optimal shooting motion. If a player feels cold, he'll hesitate or think too much or try too hard, with the result that he's less likely to use his optimal shooting motion. Thus, the feeling causes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the player really is hotter or colder, depending on how he feels.

Whether or not a player makes his next shot has sooooo many variables that a single miss or make doesn't necessarily tell the whole story.

[MChambers]

I've always thought the original, seminal study was flawed on many levels. And I've always believed in the hot hand, even if it's spawned by what is essentially an illusion. If a player feels hot, he's more confident and less tight, and thus more likely to shoot with his optimal shooting motion. If a player feels cold, he'll hesitate or think too much or try too hard, with the result that he's less likely to use his optimal shooting motion. Thus, the feeling causes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the player really is hotter or colder, depending on how he feels.

Whether or not a player makes his next shot has sooooo many variables that a single miss or make doesn't necessarily tell the whole story.
Kedsy,

I've noticed that if you have a good post, the next post is likely to be good as well. Haven't tracked it statistically, but I bet you tend to get sporked in tight clumps.

[swood1000]

I've always thought the original, seminal study was flawed on many levels. And I've always believed in the hot hand, even if it's spawned by what is essentially an illusion. If a player feels hot, he's more confident and less tight, and thus more likely to shoot with his optimal shooting motion. If a player feels cold, he'll hesitate or think too much or try too hard, with the result that he's less likely to use his optimal shooting motion. Thus, the feeling causes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the player really is hotter or colder, depending on how he feels.
Right. It seems self-evident that this must have some bearing. I get the feeling that scientists who make these statements don't have any sports experience (although I don't think that this phenomenon is limited to sports).

[BD80]

I've always thought the original, seminal study was flawed on many levels. And I've always believed in the hot hand, even if it's spawned by what is essentially an illusion. If a player feels hot, he's more confident and less tight, and thus more likely to shoot with his optimal shooting motion. If a player feels cold, he'll hesitate or think too much or try too hard, with the result that he's less likely to use his optimal shooting motion. Thus, the feeling causes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the player really is hotter or colder, depending on how he feels.

Whether or not a player makes his next shot has sooooo many variables that a single miss or make doesn't necessarily tell the whole story.

I agree with the hot hand concept. Anyone who has watched or played sports knows there is something to it.

Also agree that there are so many variables, including some raised by the very concept of "hot hand," such as tighter defense. IMO, the greatest counterbalance is shot selection. A "hot hand" often leads to "brain freeze" with respect to shot selection. The phenomenon gave birth to the phrase "heat check," in which the player takes more and more difficult shots, testing how "hot" he or she is.

[uh_no]

Right. It seems self-evident that this must have some bearing. I get the feeling that scientists who make these statements don't have any sports experience (although I don't think that this phenomenon is limited to sports).

A similar argument was made when sabermatricians when it was becoming popular....that they weren't "baseball" people....but it also doesn't mean they're wrong.

Statistical independence has a very precise mathematical definition (though in this case it seems they "did it wrong"). Calculating whether a series of events is independent doesn't depend on the domain. Further, not rejecting some null hypothesis also does not depend on the domain.

Where the domain knowledge becomes relevant from a statistical standpoint is the conclusions your draw from your calculations.

Anecdote:

In 2006 i had a fellow mets fan with whom i chatted on line who often watched mets games without pants on. The mets won the first 20 of their games when he wasn't wearing pants, and were something like 4-12 when he wore pants. Statistically, it was something like 99.7% likely that his pants explained the mets outcomes. That's the math. you can't argue with the math. But....his pants obviously have no effect on the mets....and you wouldn't know that unless you knew that a random guy wearing pants in brooklyn has no effect on a baseball game.


So...if made shots for an individual are demonstrated to be independent, they are independent (which this new study casts serious doubt on). Case closed....you can't argue with the definition and calculation (unless they did it wrong...). They don't need to know a darn thing about basketball to perform the calculation. I could pump the numbers into my computer and it could perform the calculation. It doesn't care if it's a coin toss, basketball shots, or the spin of a roulette wheel.

[gus]

I don't pretend to fully understand the math behind it, but maybe some of our stats/math oriented posters would like to comment.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/10/hot_hands_in_basketball_are_real_new_analysis_show s.html

I've always thought hot hands exist, but I've learned to question over the years what I see with my eyes thanks to the stats folks on here!

Interesting -- I'll have to read the paper later. From the slate article, I'd like to see the support for this statement:


the average shooting percentage following three misses will .... be higher than the average shooting percentage following three hits.

If it's just a point that averaging averages can be misleading, then I agree: but they're using that to justify a conclusion that the data presented in the Gilovich, Tversky and Vallone study therefore proves the hot hand... well, that seems like a problematic conclusion.

Regardless, even if a hot hand is mathematically proven, I think the conclusion from this article linked in the slate piece (http://andrewgelman.com/2015/10/18/explaining-to-gilovich-about-the-hot-hand/) is probably correct:


My reasoning goes as follows. Gilovich et al. reported three things in their paper. First, that there’s no evidence for any hot hand in basketball shooting. I think they were wrong on this one; it does seem that, if you look at basketball data carefully, you do see evidence for a hot hand, it’s just that the original analyses were hampered by bias and variance issues. Second, Gilovich et al. report that basketball fans view the hot hand effect as huge, much larger than any such effect in reality. I find their results convincing on that point. It does seem that once a person focuses on any particular effect, once he or she believes it to be nonzero, there’s a tendency to overrate its importance. I guess that’s related to the “availability heuristic” studied by Amos Tversky, another author of that hot hand paper. Gilovich et al.’s third finding is that people perceive a hot hand even if you give them completely random sequences. That appears to be true too, even if not newsworthy on its own.

[dukelifer]

I don't pretend to fully understand the math behind it, but maybe some of our stats/math oriented posters would like to comment.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/10/hot_hands_in_basketball_are_real_new_analysis_show s.html

I've always thought hot hands exist, but I've learned to question over the years what I see with my eyes thanks to the stats folks on here!

All I know is the Laettner didn't know his stats. Clearly, ignorance is bliss for all of us Duke fans.

[cspan37421]

Let's be clear ... when a statistician says that there's no such thing as a hot hand in basketball, they are not referring to the feeling of confidence and fluidity of shooting motion that comes after a couple or few successful shots in a row. No statistician is denying that, or even commenting upon it. Nor are they saying that there aren't streaks of success or misses to be found ex post.

Instead, the question is more along the lines of, given a series of successful (unsuccessful) shots have just occurred, is the shooter more likely (less likely) to make the next shot than they normally would have been?

They may also be checking for serial correlation, etc.

So these are statistical questions. These have nothing to do with whether you've played the game or not, whether you've experienced that feeling that you can't miss, etc. So I think it's very important to understand what exactly is the claim being made, before dismissing it.

It's a bit like saying an active fund manager will not beat the market over time. Sure, in any given year, some will. But - unless their name is Buffett - that won't have any bearing on whether they beat it the following year. Take the top quartile of active managers in a given year. What are the odds they'll be top quartile again the following year? About 25%. What are the odds that a bottom quartile performer will be top quartile the following year? About 25%, at least, the last time I looked at it.

Beyond this test of randomness, suppose after 3 years you've got about 1/64th of active fund managers beating the market (assume these are corrected for leverage and risk, of course). Well, you might think, aha! The hot hand in investing! OK, fine. But just try to identify them in advance. There's the rub. So it's easy to spot the "hot hand" in retrospect. If you can spot it in advance, well, we may have to find you a coaching job.

[Kedsy]

So...if made shots for an individual are demonstrated to be independent, they are independent (which this new study casts serious doubt on). Case closed...you can't argue with the definition and calculation (unless they did it wrong...). They don't need to know a darn thing about basketball to perform the calculation. I could pump the numbers into my computer and it could perform the calculation. It doesn't care if it's a coin toss, basketball shots, or the spin of a roulette wheel.

Isn't this true only if you account for all the variables? Wouldn't basketball knowledge help you identify and account for them all? Although in this case, I would argue it is nearly impossible to account for everything.

[TruBlu]

Anecdote:

In 2006 i had a fellow mets fan with whom i chatted on line who often watched mets games without pants on. The mets won the first 20 of their games when he wasn't wearing pants, and were something like 4-12 when he wore pants. Statistically, it was something like 99.7% likely that his pants explained the mets outcomes. That's the math. you can't argue with the math. But...his pants obviously have no effect on the mets...and you wouldn't know that unless you knew that a random guy wearing pants in brooklyn has no effect on a baseball game.



You did not give adequate data. It depends on his location and other variables regarding him not wearing pants.

Was he at the Mets games sitting behind home plate while the opposing pitcher was on the mound, but moved to center field seats every time the Mets' pitcher was on the mound. :p
(This might be where Speedo Guy got his idea).

[-jk]

If I've stayed alive in a few rounds of craps, should I keep rolling? Or, if on the side, keep betting on him?

How 'bout that coin toss? How many times in a row is "hot"? What's the next flip?

We're pattern recognizing/seeking beasts. We find 'em everywhere we look.

(And, no, I don't believe in the "hot hand" regardless of how many FTs I've just hit in a row: maybe 2 or 3, occasionally 4 - but always with my pants on...)

-jk

[Kedsy]

If I've stayed alive in a few rounds of craps, should I keep rolling? Or, if on the side, keep betting on him?

How 'bout that coin toss? How many times in a row is "hot"? What's the next flip?

This would be relevant if the roller had control over how the dice landed. Shooting a basketball isn't like rolling dice. The shooter doesn't shoot exactly the same way every time. And if he does something differently while he's shooting, the result is affected. This isn't true for dice or coins. So the analogy doesn't really fly.

[uh_no]

Isn't this true only if you account for all the variables? Wouldn't basketball knowledge help you identify and account for them all? Although in this case, I would argue it is nearly impossible to account for everything.

I can take the string of 3 point shots for any player in his career and tell you whether they are independent or not. There is no variable to account for there....but as someone with domain knowledge, that number would be meaningless

It all comes down to the interpretation. Do you count shots across games? Do you count across halves? Do you account for how closely guarded the player is? I mean maybe that is accounting for variables.

But the point is the calculation itself is not accounting for anything. It all comes down to whether you think that calculation yields relevant data, and as you say, domain knowledge helps you identify that...and then only really bother putting weight in the calculations that DO yield relevant data.

You need both....you need stats, you need basketball people. It could be that all shots are independent, and that result could be meaningless. It bothers me a lot when people think there is this massive divide between stats and the "eye test". You need both...and you will be woefully incomplete without either.

As we regularly demonstrate here, often times people's impressions end up very wrong...but we also find that stats can't be trusted blindly...what stats do you even know are relevant without domain knowledge? As I pointed with the pants anecdote....without domain knowledge I would have thought no-pants == wins. I wouldn't say that was a variable that wasn't accounted for....but a stupid thing to look at in the first place! I can still say that at the 99.6% confidence level, pants have an effect...and I wouldn't be wrong.

[Mabdul Doobakus]

I know the "hot hand" has generally been dismissed by statisticians in the past, and I have in fact made arguments against it in the past. But, honestly, I don't see how it could not exist. If you've ever played golf, sometimes your swing is right, and sometimes it isn't. Same thing in basketball. Sometimes the ball comes off your hand right, and sometimes it doesn't. And some days it comes off your hand right more consistently than others. I don't see how you can believe in the importance of technique and fundamentals and at the same time not believe in the hot hand. It's not something magical. The hot hand is about being in good form. At least for me it is.

[sagegrouse]

I can take the string of 3 point shots for any player in his career and tell you whether they are independent or not. There is no variable to account for there...but as someone with domain knowledge, that number would be meaningless

It all comes down to the interpretation. Do you count shots across games? Do you count across halves? Do you account for how closely guarded the player is? I mean maybe that is accounting for variables.

But the point is the calculation itself is not accounting for anything. It all comes down to whether you think that calculation yields relevant data, and as you say, domain knowledge helps you identify that...and then only really bother putting weight in the calculations that DO yield relevant data.

You need both...you need stats, you need basketball people. It could be that all shots are independent, and that result could be meaningless. It bothers me a lot when people think there is this massive divide between stats and the "eye test". You need both...and you will be woefully incomplete without either.

As we regularly demonstrate here, often times people's impressions end up very wrong...but we also find that stats can't be trusted blindly...what stats do you even know are relevant without domain knowledge? As I pointed with the pants anecdote...without domain knowledge I would have thought no-pants == wins. I wouldn't say that was a variable that wasn't accounted for...but a stupid thing to look at in the first place! I can still say that at the 99.6% confidence level, pants have an effect...and I wouldn't be wrong.

The defense against such ridiculous results as your example is usually the "power of the test." Mining a data base looking for high correlations will often produce results that appear to be statistically significant, but which are truthfully meaningless (such as your example). This approach almost guarantees that the probability of accepting a false hypothesis is very, very high, and, therefore, the "power of the test" is correspondingly low.

Kindly,
Sage
'Sometimes I really think I know what I am talking about, but surely no one else is fooled'

[killerleft]

Having the "hot hand" is as real as it gets. Without going into boring basketball anecdotes, I got "hot" (as we usually called it) many a time on the playgrounds. I often wondered how and why it happened, but I could never really quantify it.

Trying to account for the hot hand mathematically is futile, in my opinion. Looking back, I would say that what getting hot boiled down to was 1) a high level of confidence 2) recognizing that "feeling" from earlier play, and 3) acting upon it with joyous abandon.:) Long time ago, but there was sort of a feeling of "deja vu", at least the weirdness factor part of it. If I started feeling it, I resorted to the old "give and go" offense, which translates into "give me the ball and go to h___."

I never, ever got "hot" playing golf or softball. Had some good games, but I guess the rythym of those sports is too slow. Hey, wait, add rythym to the equation.;)

[MChambers]

This discussion reminds me of a quote I recently saw from someone named Jon Ronson:

"Ever since I first learned about confirmation bias, I've been seeing it everywhere."

https://books.google.com/books?id=iRidBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT28&lpg=PT28&dq=quote+on+confirmation+bias+seeing+it+everywhere&source=bl&ots=nPEgp0Z92r&sig=lZv6JJzhh4BLRuoiY40gX0F0-pM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBmoVChMI2f3p8fHiyAIVSaYeCh0wZA9d#v=on epage&q=quote%20on%20confirmation%20bias%20seeing%20it%2 0everywhere&f=false

Jokes aside, I found the Slate article a little confusing. Guess I'll have to read the underlying study. It amazes me that Amos Tversky could make the mathematical error claimed in the article, but anything is possible.

[swood1000]

Let's be clear ... when a statistician says that there's no such thing as a hot hand in basketball, they are not referring to the feeling of confidence and fluidity of shooting motion that comes after a couple or few successful shots in a row. No statistician is denying that, or even commenting upon it. Nor are they saying that there aren't streaks of success or misses to be found ex post.

Instead, the question is more along the lines of, given a series of successful (unsuccessful) shots have just occurred, is the shooter more likely (less likely) to make the next shot than they normally would have been?

They may also be checking for serial correlation, etc.

So these are statistical questions. These have nothing to do with whether you've played the game or not, whether you've experienced that feeling that you can't miss, etc. So I think it's very important to understand what exactly is the claim being made, before dismissing it.
On the one hand it is likely true that simply because a player makes a number of shots in a row this doesn't mean that he is "hot" or that it is more likely that he will make his next shot. But when I think of this I think of the player "feeling" hot. If a player makes a number of shots in a row he does not necessarily have the feeling that he is hot. I'd like to see a study in which the scientists did not correlate the next shot with the last shots, but the next shot with the player's subjective feeling of being hot.


It's a bit like saying an active fund manager will not beat the market over time. Sure, in any given year, some will. But - unless their name is Buffett - that won't have any bearing on whether they beat it the following year. Take the top quartile of active managers in a given year. What are the odds they'll be top quartile again the following year? About 25%. What are the odds that a bottom quartile performer will be top quartile the following year? About 25%, at least, the last time I looked at it.

Beyond this test of randomness, suppose after 3 years you've got about 1/64th of active fund managers beating the market (assume these are corrected for leverage and risk, of course). Well, you might think, aha! The hot hand in investing! OK, fine. But just try to identify them in advance. There's the rub. So it's easy to spot the "hot hand" in retrospect. If you can spot it in advance, well, we may have to find you a coaching job.
I suppose that a person could be "hot" in picking stocks, and that this could manifest itself in a heightened awareness of market characteristics, but in a pure gambling environment a person's subjective feeling can't influence the outcome, as it can in sports, so in that setting the feeling would seem to be just an illusion.

[Kedsy]

I know the "hot hand" has generally been dismissed by statisticians in the past, and I have in fact made arguments against it in the past. But, honestly, I don't see how it could not exist. If you've ever played golf, sometimes your swing is right, and sometimes it isn't. Same thing in basketball. Sometimes the ball comes off your hand right, and sometimes it doesn't. And some days it comes off your hand right more consistently than others. I don't see how you can believe in the importance of technique and fundamentals and at the same time not believe in the hot hand. It's not something magical. The hot hand is about being in good form. At least for me it is.

This is exactly what I was trying to say before. A lot of things go into shooting a basketball, and even the best shooters can't get them all right and reproduce that "perfect" form every single time.


On the one hand it is likely true that simply because a player makes a number of shots in a row this doesn't mean that he is "hot" or that it is more likely that he will make his next shot. But when I think of this I think of the player "feeling" hot. If a player makes a number of shots in a row he does not necessarily have the feeling that he is hot. I'd like to see a study in which the scientists did not correlate the next shot with the last shots, but the next shot with the player's subjective feeling of being hot.

It's been awhile since I read it, but I believe the original study did attempt to do this. In one of the free throw tests they asked the subject whether he felt he would hit his next shot or not. My recollection is that the shooters' predictions proved not to be particularly accurate, in either direction, but I didn't believe that answering such a question in the positive was equivalent to having a hot hand.

I don't recall whether they allowed the shooters to warm up before the test, or if they did, how long they allowed the guys to warm up. I vaguely recall thinking that if they didn't give the shooter enough reps to get into a groove, then it would be almost impossible for him to get hot, or certainly impossible to know whether he was hot or not. Which would render the whole test flawed.

[Listen to Quants]

This discussion reminds me of a quote I recently saw from someone named Jon Ronson:

"Ever since I first learned about confirmation bias, I've been seeing it everywhere."

https://books.google.com/books?id=iRidBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT28&lpg=PT28&dq=quote+on+confirmation+bias+seeing+it+everywhere&source=bl&ots=nPEgp0Z92r&sig=lZv6JJzhh4BLRuoiY40gX0F0-pM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBmoVChMI2f3p8fHiyAIVSaYeCh0wZA9d#v=on epage&q=quote%20on%20confirmation%20bias%20seeing%20it%2 0everywhere&f=false

Jokes aside, I found the Slate article a little confusing. Guess I'll have to read the underlying study. It amazes me that Amos Tversky could make the mathematical error claimed in the article, but anything is possible.

That, the quote, is very funny. Thank you. And I agree on the respect for Tversky, many of us have used his statistical tests and rough insights (he is the box-whisker and many nonparametric tests guy, right?). What I do not know is if he is particularly compulsive and the selection bias error or the article was fairly subtle. It is easy enough to see how, say given exactly 5 heads in ten tosses, that looking at the coin toss after a randomly selected heads is not a 50/50 but a 40/50 proportion, it's harder (I think) to see that in group of 4 selections that "sound" random.

[bedeviled]

Having the "hot hand" is as real as it gets. Without going into boring basketball anecdotes, I got "hot" (as we usually called it) many a time on the playgrounds. I often wondered how and why it happened, but I could never really quantify it.
Trying to account for the hot hand mathematically is futile, in my opinion. Looking back, I would say that what getting hot boiled down to was 1) a high level of confidence 2) recognizing that "feeling" from earlier play, and 3) acting upon it with joyous abandon.:) Long time ago, but there was sort of a feeling of "deja vu", at least the weirdness factor part of it. If I started feeling it, I resorted to the old "give and go" offense, which translates into "give me the ball and go to h___."
I never, ever got "hot" playing golf or softball. Had some good games, but I guess the rythym of those sports is too slow. Hey, wait, add rythym to the equation.;)

THIS is what I, too, think of when I hear the term "the hot hand" and the need for "heat checks." To me, it seems like other lines of query/discussion relate to:
whether or not the streakiness of shooting is randomly distributed or is influenced by recent shots
whether or not someone is having a good or bad shooting night due to technique or execution

What you describe, including the bolded parts which may seem ridiculous to some people, is what psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi referred to as the "Flow" state (back in the 70s, but see In Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990)). Others refer to it as the psychology of peak performance. In sports, we often say someone is "in the zone" or "is unconscious" as there is a sense of effortless perfection. The most often cited example of flow that I've seen is Michael Jordan's performance in Game 1 of the 1992 NBA Finals, when even he is in disbelief of his play. This article (http://www.tricycle.com/web-exclusive/spirit-sport?page=0,1) includes a couple small quotes from a few athletes and states that, in Second Wind: The Memoirs of an Opinionated Man (1979),
Bill Russell mentions many of the qualities athletes may experience in the zone: profound joy, acute intuition (which at times feels like precognition), a feeling of effortlessness in the midst of intense exertion, a sense of the action taking place in slow motion, feelings of awe and perfection, increased mastery, and self-transcendence

That article has a shortened quote from Russell's book, but I think it is worth reading the actual extended excerpt which can be found here (http://www.deepfun.com/russell.html). It really highlights the mystical and beautiful nature of this state.

[subzero02]

I know the "hot hand" has generally been dismissed by statisticians in the past, and I have in fact made arguments against it in the past. But, honestly, I don't see how it could not exist. If you've ever played golf, sometimes your swing is right, and sometimes it isn't. Same thing in basketball. Sometimes the ball comes off your hand right, and sometimes it doesn't. And some days it comes off your hand right more consistently than others. I don't see how you can believe in the importance of technique and fundamentals and at the same time not believe in the hot hand. It's not something magical. The hot hand is about being in good form. At least for me it is.

Randolph Childress and Tiger Woods during one of his multiple tournament winning streaks would tend to agree with you.



https://youtu.be/sRJMsoIptQo

[Henderson]

Didn't the "Freakonomics" people statistically debunk the "hot hand" theory some years ago?

Interesting in this thread to see some posters who rely so heavily on statistics to argue other points are so sure these statistical findings are wrong.

[swood1000]

It's been awhile since I read it, but I believe the original study did attempt to do this. In one of the free throw tests they asked the subject whether he felt he would hit his next shot or not. My recollection is that the shooters' predictions proved not to be particularly accurate, in either direction, but I didn't believe that answering such a question in the positive was equivalent to having a hot hand.

I don't recall whether they allowed the shooters to warm up before the test, or if they did, how long they allowed the guys to warm up. I vaguely recall thinking that if they didn't give the shooter enough reps to get into a groove, then it would be almost impossible for him to get hot, or certainly impossible to know whether he was hot or not. Which would render the whole test flawed.
Also it could be the case that the element of actual competition (or maybe the element of intense concentration present during serious practice sessions) plays a part here, which would be hard to duplicate in the typical testing environment. And it could be that an artificial testing environment in which the subject is constantly being asked if he "feels hot" results in a self-consciousness that inhibits getting "hot." It's also possible that some people get hot more than others, particularly experienced athletes.

[Indoor66]

All I know is that when I made a 59 roll pass at the crap table and followed that roll with 16 successive made points, I was hot - as were the dice. Make of it what you will. I got the chips!

[swood1000]

Is getting "cold" just the flip side, so that those who deny getting "hot" also deny getting "cold"? I would think that the evidence for getting cold would be even clearer, especially among athletes who are "trying too hard" or worrying or thinking too much about their "stroke" etc., instead of just letting it flow naturally.

[Kedsy]

Is getting "cold" just the flip side, so that those who deny getting "hot" also deny getting "cold"? I would think that the evidence for getting cold would be even clearer, especially among athletes who are "trying too hard" or worrying or thinking too much about their "stroke" etc., instead of just letting it flow naturally.

I agree with your take, but yes, those who deny the concept of the hot streak also deny the existence of the cold streak.

[Kedsy]

Interesting in this thread to see some posters who rely so heavily on statistics to argue other points are so sure these statistical findings are wrong.

If these particular statistical findings are flawed (due to the improper structure of the study or many other possible reasons), that would explain it, wouldn't it?

[sagegrouse]

Is getting "cold" just the flip side, so that those who deny getting "hot" also deny getting "cold"? I would think that the evidence for getting cold would be even clearer, especially among athletes who are "trying too hard" or worrying or thinking too much about their "stroke" etc., instead of just letting it flow naturally.


I agree with your take, but yes, those who deny the concept of the hot streak also deny the existence of the cold streak.

Since there are only two outcomes, hot streak and cold streak seem logically identical.

[rsvman]

If I've stayed alive in a few rounds of craps, should I keep rolling? Or, if on the side, keep betting on him?

How 'bout that coin toss? How many times in a row is "hot"? What's the next flip?

We're pattern recognizing/seeking beasts. We find 'em everywhere we look.

(And, no, I don't believe in the "hot hand" regardless of how many FTs I've just hit in a row: maybe 2 or 3, occasionally 4 - but always with my pants on...)

-jk

Yep.

In fact, if you ask a group of 50 people to flip a coin 100 times and write down their results, and then ask another group of 10 people to write down a sequence of heads and tails as though they had flipped a coin 100 times, a mathematician can almost always pick out the people who didn't actually flip the coins. Why? Because in their attempt to imitate randomness, they very seldom write down a long enough string of heads or tails in a row; these occur when you actually flip the coin, but people who are attempting to SIMULATE randomness don't allow for this natural occurrence.

[elvis14]

Having the "hot hand" is as real as it gets. Without going into boring basketball anecdotes, I got "hot" (as we usually called it) many a time on the playgrounds. I often wondered how and why it happened, but I could never really quantify it.

Trying to account for the hot hand mathematically is futile, in my opinion. Looking back, I would say that what getting hot boiled down to was 1) a high level of confidence 2) recognizing that "feeling" from earlier play, and 3) acting upon it with joyous abandon.:) Long time ago, but there was sort of a feeling of "deja vu", at least the weirdness factor part of it. If I started feeling it, I resorted to the old "give and go" offense, which translates into "give me the ball and go to h___."

I never, ever got "hot" playing golf or softball. Had some good games, but I guess the rythym of those sports is too slow. Hey, wait, add rythym to the equation.;)

Good post killerleft. I know what you mean about the weirdness. I almost don't want to admit that it's going on for fear that I'll jinx it :-) I do get hot hand in softball, however. Some days I can put the ball pretty much anywhere I want (except over the fence since I have warning track power).

[Listen to Quants]

Since there are only two outcomes, hot streak and cold streak seem logically identical.

Indeed.

If the data were stationary. And if only one effect were occurring. But the data are unlikely to be stationary (pooling different shooters (some are careful to only take good shots even when they feel hot, others not so much) across different kind of games (close, not close, home with gf in stands, away alone and bored, etc) suggest to me nonstationary data. Multiple influences/effects seems even more likely. For me, clarity comes in asking are the overall net effects large or small and they *might* be small (say under 5% change of shooting percentage).

[BD80]

Since there are only two outcomes, hot streak and cold streak seem logically identical.

Au contraire, there are the shots that SHOULD have gone in but for the foul that wasn't called, or the rims that are too hard, or too loose, or the wind that gusted, etc.

In my experience, that is 20-30% of the shots

[Henderson]

If these particular statistical findings are flawed (due to the improper structure of the study or many other possible reasons), that would explain it, wouldn't it?


Yes, it surely would. But there are other reasons that would explain one's tossing about statistics if one has a point to make.

If one is trained in economics or statistics sufficiently to vet every statistic one bandies about and has undergone the analysis of those stats necessary to confirm or debunk a given conclusion, one is equipped to be selective about the statistics one leans so heavily upon. I'm not so equipped, but I have both a love of stats and a (healthy I think) skepticism that they always tell the story correctly.

I like stats. Most are at least informative, and many debunk my pre-existing assumptions. You've posted some good ones yourself that had that effect on my thinking.

But one of the lessons of this discussion is that we have to think not only about the stats and the conclusions drawn from them, but about the methodologies used in accumulating those stats and the formulae by which a conclusion is drawn. And when a conclusion based on statistics is counter-intuitive based on common sense (as here), it's good to step back and ask whether one's love affair with statistics isn't an overly narrow approach to figuring things out.

Common sense and our world experiences are valuable filters through which statistics should pass. Without an assumption that either is controlling, but with an understanding that either could be misleading.

I think they used to call this critical thinking. There's probably a fancier word for it now.

[rasputin]

Also it could be the case that the element of actual competition (or maybe the element of intense concentration present during serious practice sessions) plays a part here, which would be hard to duplicate in the typical testing environment. And it could be that an artificial testing environment in which the subject is constantly being asked if he "feels hot" results in a self-consciousness that inhibits getting "hot." It's also possible that some people get hot more than others, particularly experienced athletes.

Somehow I'm reminded of a streak I had a number of years ago on the golf course. I have usually been a reasonably decent putter, pretty strong at lag putting in particular, and somewhat less so at those 5-to-10 footers. Over a period of a few weeks, I was just making EVERYTHING within 15 feet or so, and the hole looked like a coffee can to me. Unfortunately, that streak had a limited run, and the hole went back to its normal thimble size. Anyway, the point being that for that period of time, I just KNEW I was going to make 'em.

And, Mike Dunleavy says hello.

[swood1000]

Since there are only two outcomes, hot streak and cold streak seem logically identical.
But are they equally likely? There seem to be more ways of breaking something than there are ways of improving it. I would think that introducing a change in my normal stroke or procedure would have a greater chance of decreasing my efficiency than of improving it, so cold streaks would be easier to demonstrate.

[swood1000]

Related to the notion of the hot hand would be the idea of "magical thinking" or superstitions, and their effect on outcomes.


Yet in their study, Damisch and colleagues challenge the conclusion that superstitious thoughts bear no causal influence on future outcomes. Of course, they were not hypothesizing that the trillions of tiny cracks upon which we tread every day are imbued with some sort of sinister spine-crushing malevolence. Instead, they were interested in the types of superstitions that people think bring them good luck. The lucky hats, the favorite socks, the ritualized warmup routines, the childhood blankies. Can belief in such charms actually have an influence over one's ability to, say, perform better on a test or in an athletic competition? In other words, is Ray Allen's performance on the basketball court in some ways dependent on eating chicken and rice at exactly 2:30? Did Jason Giambi's golden thong actually have a hand in stopping a hitless streak?

To initially test this possibility experimenters brought participants into the lab and told them that they would be doing a little golfing. They were to see how many of 10 putts they could make from the same location. The manipulation was simply this: when experimenters handed the golf ball to the participant they either mentioned that the ball "has turned out to be a lucky ball" in previous trials, or that the ball was simply the one "everyone had used so far". Remarkably, the mere suggestion that the ball was lucky significantly influenced performance, causing participants to make almost two more putts on average. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/superstitions-can-make-you/
So why are they finding evidence to support this but not evidence to support the "hot hand"?

[sagegrouse]

Since there are only two outcomes, hot streak and cold streak seem logically identical.


Indeed.

If the data were stationary. And if only one effect were occurring. But the data are unlikely to be stationary (pooling different shooters (some are careful to only take good shots even when they feel hot, others not so much) across different kind of games (close, not close, home with gf in stands, away alone and bored, etc) suggest to me nonstationary data. Multiple influences/effects seems even more likely. For me, clarity comes in asking are the overall net effects large or small and they *might* be small (say under 5% change of shooting percentage).


Au contraire, there are the shots that SHOULD have gone in but for the foul that wasn't called, or the rims that are too hard, or too loose, or the wind that gusted, etc.

In my experience, that is 20-30% of the shots

Simple-minded I may be, but the conditional probability of a hit/miss given the previous shot was a hit/miss are basically the same problem. Now, if one is interested only in a subset of the data, such as streaks (what happens after four hits in a row) then the hit/miss formulation may be analytically different.

[House P]

The World Series presents an opportunity to test how you feel about the idea of a player on a "hot streak".

- Throughout his career, Daniel Murphy has averaged 1 HR every 14.6 games (or 58.4 PA).
- In the 2015 playoffs, Murphy has averaged 1 HR every 1.3 games (or 5.6 PA).

That's about as "hot" as you will ever see a player.

Now consider the following hypothetical scenario. What it someone offered to give you free courtside final four tickets for life if you answered the following question correctly.

"Will Daniel Murphy hit at least one home run in the 2015 World Series?"

How would you answer?

Given that Murphy will likely get 20-30 PA in the World Series, mostly against above average pitching, your personal answer says a lot about how you feel about the idea of a player on a hot streak. If you think perceived hot streaks are mostly a factor of randomness, you would probably answer "no" to the question above. If you believe hot streaks are a significant factor in athlete performance, you would probably answer "yes".

Now, whether or not Murphy actually hits a home run won’t say much about whether hot streaks really exist (too small a sample), but your answer to the question above may reveal something about how you feel about the topic.

[swood1000]

Simple-minded I may be, but the conditional probability of a hit/miss given the previous shot was a hit/miss are basically the same problem. Now, if one is interested only in a subset of the data, such as streaks (what happens after four hits in a row) then the hit/miss formulation may be analytically different.
However, it seems that there would be more cold streaks than hot streaks, in that there appear to be more factors (psychological and otherwise) that can disrupt a player's rhythm than there are factors that will enhance it. The former we can give all kinds of examples of whereas the latter we cannot.

[Henderson]

What it someone offered to give you free courtside final four tickets for life if you answered the following question correctly.

"Will Daniel Murphy hit at least one home run in the 2015 World Series?"

How would you answer?



I'd answer "yes" and have my buddy answer "no". And we'd split the final four tickets for life.

But seriously, it looks like a fun game. Post it as a poll or something. Heck, the sports books here might have that as a prop. I might just see....

[sagegrouse]

However, it seems that there would be more cold streaks than hot streaks, in that there appear to be more factors (psychological and otherwise) that can disrupt a player's rhythm than there are factors that will enhance it. The former we can give all kinds of examples of whereas the latter we cannot.

That, of course, is a testable hypothesis. It's complicated a bit because the underlying probability of making a shot is different from 0.50, which will tip the scales in one direction or another.

[Philadukie]

The World Series presents an opportunity to test how you feel about the idea of a player on a "hot streak".

- Throughout his career, Daniel Murphy has averaged 1 HR every 14.6 games (or 58.4 PA).
- In the 2015 playoffs, Murphy has averaged 1 HR every 1.3 games (or 5.6 PA).

That's about as "hot" as you will ever see a player.


As a Phillies fan, I still have nightmares of Cody Ross (who?!), the MVP of the 2010 NLCS.

[-jk]

...

Interesting in this thread to see some posters who rely so heavily on statistics to argue other points are so sure these statistical findings are wrong.

Yeah. Folks who do serious stats should bring their stats to a defense of the "hot hand".

-jk

[Neals384]

A similar argument was made when sabermatricians when it was becoming popular...that they weren't "baseball" people...but it also doesn't mean they're wrong.

Statistical independence has a very precise mathematical definition (though in this case it seems they "did it wrong"). Calculating whether a series of events is independent doesn't depend on the domain. Further, not rejecting some null hypothesis also does not depend on the domain.

Where the domain knowledge becomes relevant from a statistical standpoint is the conclusions your draw from your calculations.

Anecdote:

In 2006 i had a fellow mets fan with whom i chatted on line who often watched mets games without pants on. The mets won the first 20 of their games when he wasn't wearing pants, and were something like 4-12 when he wore pants. Statistically, it was something like 99.7% likely that his pants explained the mets outcomes. That's the math. you can't argue with the math. But...his pants obviously have no effect on the mets...and you wouldn't know that unless you knew that a random guy wearing pants in brooklyn has no effect on a baseball game.


So...if made shots for an individual are demonstrated to be independent, they are independent (which this new study casts serious doubt on). Case closed...you can't argue with the definition and calculation (unless they did it wrong...). They don't need to know a darn thing about basketball to perform the calculation. I could pump the numbers into my computer and it could perform the calculation. It doesn't care if it's a coin toss, basketball shots, or the spin of a roulette wheel. .
I like the Mets, but not enough to try the no pants thing. Not even in theWorld Series

[swood1000]

The World Series presents an opportunity to test how you feel about the idea of a player on a "hot streak".

- Throughout his career, Daniel Murphy has averaged 1 HR every 14.6 games (or 58.4 PA).
- In the 2015 playoffs, Murphy has averaged 1 HR every 1.3 games (or 5.6 PA).

That's about as "hot" as you will ever see a player.

Now consider the following hypothetical scenario. What it someone offered to give you free courtside final four tickets for life if you answered the following question correctly.

"Will Daniel Murphy hit at least one home run in the 2015 World Series?"

How would you answer?

Given that Murphy will likely get 20-30 PA in the World Series, mostly against above average pitching, your personal answer says a lot about how you feel about the idea of a player on a hot streak. If you think perceived hot streaks are mostly a factor of randomness, you would probably answer "no" to the question above. If you believe hot streaks are a significant factor in athlete performance, you would probably answer "yes".

Now, whether or not Murphy actually hits a home run won’t say much about whether hot streaks really exist (too small a sample), but your answer to the question above may reveal something about how you feel about the topic.
It also says something about the person's view of how long "hot streaks" last and what can bring them to an end. In basketball I generally think that if a player is hot, that will tend to last for this game but not necessarily carry over into the next games. In baseball people tend to talk of it in terms of a series of games, although if a player gets four hits one night or throws a no-hitter that could be the result of being hot for one game. I'd be curious to see a poll done among athletes asking about the longest, shortest and typical hot or cold streaks they have experienced.

There is a lot of time between the playoffs and the World Series, which gives players the opportunity to cool off, to be pressured by the press, to psych themselves out, etc. Also, the World Series has all sorts of historical significance that can have a unique psychological impact on people. Furthermore, streaks always end. Otherwise they wouldn't be called streaks. And if a player is hitting 80% from behind the arc I can be confident that he's having a hot streak but less confident that it will continue. So I'd say that a person who doubts that the streak would continue is not necessarily saying that he or she doubts that there was a legitimate streak up to that point.

[gus]

Yep.

In fact, if you ask a group of 50 people to flip a coin 100 times and write down their results, and then ask another group of 10 people to write down a sequence of heads and tails as though they had flipped a coin 100 times, a mathematician can almost always pick out the people who didn't actually flip the coins. Why? Because in their attempt to imitate randomness, they very seldom write down a long enough string of heads or tails in a row; these occur when you actually flip the coin, but people who are attempting to SIMULATE randomness don't allow for this natural occurrence.


I've long maintained that the hot hand does not exist. Perceiving a hot hand is simply confirmation bias, and what you're describing here: human beings fundamentally do not understand randomness. Before I go on, let me just put this out there: I have no interest in entertaining the insulting (and wrong) rebuttal that "anyone who says there's no such thing as a hot hand obviously never played any sports!".

I think this discussion hinges on what people think "hot hand" means. To me, people use that expression to mean "something clicked and suddenly s/he can't miss", and it's related to the feeling that the basket feels like a hula hoop. To put it in a scenario... you're the point guard with the ball as time is about to expire. Your team is down two, and somehow two players are open from three. One is a career 45% shooter who's 1 for three on the night. The other is a career 30% shooter who's had a hot night, and is currently 3 for 3. Who do you pass it to?

I would pass it the 45% shooter every single time.

All of the statistical analysis in the last few years that try to tease out evidence of "hot hands" give no indication that is the wrong decision. For example, the Harvard study last year that attempted to correct for difficulty of shot to correct for the fact that people tend to shoot more difficult shots when they perceive they're shooting well concluded that "[their] estimates of the Hot Hand effect range from 1.2 to 2.4 percentage points in increased likelihood of making a shot."

A 1.2 to 2.4 pp increased likelihood, I would argue, is NOT what people describe a hot hand is. And to go back to my scenario, people who pass the ball to the "hot hand" are choosing a player with a 31.2 - 32.4% likelihood over someone with a 45% likelihood of making the game winning shot.

[swood1000]

I've long maintained that the hot hand does not exist. Perceiving a hot hand is simply confirmation bias, and what you're describing here: human beings fundamentally do not understand randomness. Before I go on, let me just put this out there: I have no interest in entertaining the insulting (and wrong) rebuttal that "anyone who says there's no such thing as a hot hand obviously never played any sports!".

I think this discussion hinges on what people think "hot hand" means. To me, people use that expression to mean "something clicked and suddenly s/he can't miss", and it's related to the feeling that the basket feels like a hula hoop. To put it in a scenario... you're the point guard with the ball as time is about to expire. Your team is down two, and somehow two players are open from three. One is a career 45% shooter who's 1 for three on the night. The other is a career 30% shooter who's had a hot night, and is currently 3 for 3. Who do you pass it to?

I would pass it the 45% shooter every single time.

All of the statistical analysis in the last few years that try to tease out evidence of "hot hands" give no indication that is the wrong decision. For example, the Harvard study last year that attempted to correct for difficulty of shot to correct for the fact that people tend to shoot more difficult shots when they perceive they're shooting well concluded that "[their] estimates of the Hot Hand effect range from 1.2 to 2.4 percentage points in increased likelihood of making a shot."

A 1.2 to 2.4 pp increased likelihood, I would argue, is NOT what people describe a hot hand is. And to go back to my scenario, people who pass the ball to the "hot hand" are choosing a player with a 31.2 - 32.4% likelihood over someone with a 45% likelihood of making the game winning shot.

Yet in their study, Damisch and colleagues challenge the conclusion that superstitious thoughts bear no causal influence on future outcomes. Of course, they were not hypothesizing that the trillions of tiny cracks upon which we tread every day are imbued with some sort of sinister spine-crushing malevolence. Instead, they were interested in the types of superstitions that people think bring them good luck. The lucky hats, the favorite socks, the ritualized warmup routines, the childhood blankies. Can belief in such charms actually have an influence over one's ability to, say, perform better on a test or in an athletic competition? In other words, is Ray Allen's performance on the basketball court in some ways dependent on eating chicken and rice at exactly 2:30? Did Jason Giambi's golden thong actually have a hand in stopping a hitless streak?

To initially test this possibility experimenters brought participants into the lab and told them that they would be doing a little golfing. They were to see how many of 10 putts they could make from the same location. The manipulation was simply this: when experimenters handed the golf ball to the participant they either mentioned that the ball "has turned out to be a lucky ball" in previous trials, or that the ball was simply the one "everyone had used so far". Remarkably, the mere suggestion that the ball was lucky significantly influenced performance, causing participants to make almost two more putts on average.http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-can-make-you/ (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/superstitions-can-make-you/)
If the results of this study are correct, then a person's psychological state can have an impact on his performance in sports. Why wouldn't a sustained psychological state of this kind qualify as a hot streak, not explainable by events that occurred that way randomly? Also, don't you think that there can be physical or psychological reasons that an athlete is under-performing? Perhaps he has something traumatic on his mind or maybe he has a touch of the flu. Couldn't things like this disrupt a person's effectiveness? Should you still pass to the person with the flu just because he plays well when he is healthy?

Edit: we should pass to the person having a cold streak so that he'll work his way through it, but we do it perhaps without the expectation that he has already done so.

[BD80]

... Should you still pass to the person with the flu ...

The literal hot hand

[gus]

Now, that said -- I've read through a bunch of the paper presented here. It's definitely interesting, and they're concluding that the hot hand effect can be much stronger than 1.2 to 2.4 pp.

I'm not convinced yet (I haven't read the entire paper yet), but their experiment design is interesting, particularly with how it relates to teammate's ability to perceive a hot streak and the implications on decision making (i.e., speaking directly to the scenario I presented).

[gus]

If the results of this study are correct, then a person's psychological state can have an impact on his performance in sports. Why wouldn't a sustained psychological state of this kind qualify as a hot streak, not explainable by events that occurred that way randomly?

I don't know.


Also, don't you think that there can be physical or psychological reasons that an athlete is under-performing? Perhaps he has something traumatic on his mind or maybe he has a touch of the flu. Couldn't things like this disrupt a person's effectiveness? Should you still pass to the person with the flu just because he plays well when he is healthy?

Of course, but I thought that was assumed. No one is arguing that human beings are robots.

[swood1000]

Also, don't you think that there can be physical or psychological reasons that an athlete is under-performing? Perhaps he has something traumatic on his mind or maybe he has a touch of the flu. Couldn't things like this disrupt a person's effectiveness? Should you still pass to the person with the flu just because he plays well when he is healthy?

Of course, but I thought that was assumed. No one is arguing that human beings are robots.
But isn't the cold streak just the flip side of the hot streak, such that if a player should ignore a hot streak when deciding whom to pass to he should also ignore the cold streak? Maybe not, since the cold streak seems much more open to explanation and understandable causes.

[gus]

But isn't the cold streak just the flip side of the hot streak, such that if a player should ignore a hot streak when deciding whom to pass to he should also ignore the cold streak? Maybe not, since the cold streak seems much more open to explanation and understandable causes.

It's a fair question, but I think you've answered it yourself.

To use an admittedly imperfect analogy: let's say you have race car with a top speed of 150 mph. There are a lot of reasons why on any particular test run the car could drive much slower than that, you're not likely to drive it faster unless you change something about the car.

[swood1000]

It's a fair question, but I think you've answered it yourself.

To use an admittedly imperfect analogy: let's say you have race car with a top speed of 150 mph. There are a lot of reasons why on any particular test run the car could drive much slower than that, you're not likely to drive it faster unless you change something about the car.
It's also possible that without any disruptive influences the average athlete's performance would be significantly higher, so that his or her normal performance is really a kind of under-performance or cold streak.

[gus]

It's also possible that without any disruptive influences the average athlete's performance would be significantly higher, so that his or her normal performance is really a kind of under-performance or cold streak.

People who habitually under-perform don't tend to be captured in statistical analyses of professional (or even division 1) athletes.

Among recreational players though, there's probably much more variation for individuals in their performance. I think this is separate from "hot-handedness". Is the guy who decides to actually start trying in a pick up game really "hot" or is he just now focusing on performing to his max? This is why the controlled tests are typically designed with a incentive (financial or otherwise): to keep people not trying from muddying the water.

[swood1000]

People who habitually under-perform don't tend to be captured in statistical analyses of professional (or even division 1) athletes.
But the idea is that without disruptive influences everyone would perform at a higher rate. So we would not be looking for factors that when added cause higher performance but for factors that when added keep us from performing at a higher level. Looked at this way, the level of optimal performance would be the norm, but for the disruptive influences, and the athlete's typical performance is under-performance with a potentially identifiable cause.

[left_hook_lacey]

I believe in the "hot hand" more than I believe in a team "getting up emotionally" for a game.

Take the Miami game this weekend. I just don't buy into Miami being able to summon some sort extra gear because of emotion. You either have "it" or you don't. They don't have it this year. No amount of rah rah or jumping up and down to get fired up is gonna change that. I've always felt like that is a load of crap created by ESPN and others because they have a vested interest to try to to get viewers to watch.

The "hot hand" on the other hand(pun intented), is real in my book. Anybody that has ever played a scoring sport on a competitive level has either had the hot hand, or been on the wrong side of it.

[BD80]

How about in tennis?

There are some players who get on a run where their serve is absolutely unhittable, and they could hit a dime placed on the back line of the service box. The same player can go through a stretch where they can't get a serve in even if they back it down by 20%. There is no way you can say the odds of such a player serving an ace are the same in middle of either stretch.

[cspan37421]

There is no way you can say the odds of such a player serving an ace are the same in middle of either stretch.

By definition, I'd say you're right.

[cspan37421]

I agree with your take, but yes, those who deny the concept of the hot streak also deny the existence of the cold streak.

No one denies the existence of streaks. Streaks happen even in random coin flipping, as others have noted above (4 heads in a row, 6.25% of the time, on average). As noted, random streaks occur more often than most people think. The denial of hot hand does mean streaks don't happen. It means that they can't be reliably identified in advance at a rate greater than chance. It also means that, upon the ex-post identification of a streak, the odds of the next shot going in are not really changed from the player's average skill (say, corrected for quality of defense).

It seems to me that if the hot hand were real, there would be no reversion to the mean. Under hot hand, a player who started hitting a few in a row would logically hit the next few at a higher % chance. This keeps going, hitting at a higher and higher rate until they are deadeye perfect! It doesn't happen. If the hot hand theory were real, you need a theory to explain how and why it stops. If you say, "cold hand", well, good luck identifying in advance when that switch from hot to cold takes place. At some point, the notion starts sounding like epicycles or something.

Those who think they can predict hot hand should take their talents to Las Vegas. Identifying "hot hands" ex post isn't really what the notion of "hot hand" is all about. It is: should you pass to the guy (or gal) with the hot hand, even if their shooting % is lower than someone else that is available to shoot it?

Maybe, if there's a defensive mismatch that the other team can't adjust to. But that's not hot hand, that's a mismatch, which causes the baseline % being compared to be truly different than their career (or season) average. But most of the time it's not wise to assume a worse player on a hot streak will continue that indefinitely, nor to assume a better player on a cold streak will continue to fail. Again, unless there are sound reasons that effectively change the baseline % under consideration (defensive quality, illness/injury, etc).

[cspan37421]

This discussion reminds me of a quote I recently saw from someone named Jon Ronson:

"Ever since I first learned about confirmation bias, I've been seeing it everywhere."



Obligatory XKCD:

5633

[uh_no]

This argument is so stupid and comes up all the time. Hot Hands are real.

http://www.amazon.com/HotHands-Hand-Warmers/dp/B00PX20LO0

If I have to have some delivered to your houses to make you believe it, I will!

[BD80]

This argument is so stupid and comes up all the time. Hot Hands are real.

http://www.amazon.com/HotHands-Hand-Warmers/dp/B00PX20LO0

If I have to have some delivered to your houses to make you believe it, I will!

But can they cure cold feet?

[MChambers]

It seems to me that if the hot hand were real, there would be no reversion to the mean. Under hot hand, a player who started hitting a few in a row would logically hit the next few at a higher % chance. This keeps going, hitting at a higher and higher rate until they are deadeye perfect! It doesn't happen. If the hot hand theory were real, you need a theory to explain how and why it stops. If you say, "cold hand", well, good luck identifying in advance when that switch from hot to cold takes place. At some point, the notion starts sounding like epicycles or something.


This oddity has occurred to me, too. I suppose it depends on how you define and/or measure a hot hand. Is it simply a higher probability of hitting the next shot after making one shot, or perhaps several shots in a row? And how much higher of a probability? Maybe it's not all that much of a delta.

[swood1000]

Obligatory XKCD:

5633
See also spurious-correlations (http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations).

[darthur]

Yeah. Folks who do serious stats should bring their stats to a defense of the "hot hand".

-jk

So here's the original paper: http://psiexp.ss.uci.edu/research/teaching/Gilovich_Tversky_1985.pdf

I was curious and tried to measure how just big the effect of their error is here. So first, let's be clear: their math is wrong. They looked at professional basketball players and counted P[made shot | three previous makes] and P[made shot | three previous misses]. They then averaged these across players: Average P[made shot | three previous makes] = 0.46 and Average P[made shot | three previous misses] = 0.56, saw the first one is smaller, and concluded there is no hot hand.

If we assume that a player shoots 50%, they are basically relying on the false fact that if I flip a coin N times, Average (Occurrences of HHHH) / (Occurrences of HHHH + HHHT) is 0.5. This statement is not true. It's true that the average occurrences of HHHH will be almost exactly half the average occurrences of HHHT, but it's not true that the average of the ratios will be 0.5. Anyway, I wanted to see how not true it is, so I tried a million simulations and recorded what the average of the ratio actually is for each N:

50: 0.424687
100: 0.464879
150: 0.478439
200: 0.484524
250: 0.488079
300: 0.490185
350: 0.491675
400: 0.492764
450: 0.493608
500: 0.494284
550: 0.494830
600: 0.495293
650: 0.495690
700: 0.496017
750: 0.496295
800: 0.496537
850: 0.496735
900: 0.496931
950: 0.497096
1000: 0.497253

They have 9 players with N values ranging from 248 to 884, so we are only talking about a 1-2% difference here. I didn't try to account for different people having different shooting percentages but it does seem to me like this mistake doesn't really change anything. But it's still very interesting.

(More subjectively, I have some larger doubts about the paper's methodology and sample size though. I also think the argument being thrown around here that a "hot hand" implies spiraling off to 100% or 0% to be a pretty ridiculous straw man.)

[killerleft]

I'll bet Coach K had the "hot hand" on occasion when he played, and he's obviously seen players do some spectacular things over the years. I wonder how he feels about it now, after all these years as a coach?

[cspan37421]

Darthur,

Though I have a degree in math from our favorite revenue sport school, I've been out of the proof business for quite some time. And was more of an applied guy anyway. Nevertheless, I would like to see something more closed-form to prove your claim, instead of the fact that you did a million simulations and this is what you came up with. Unless there's been a revolution in random number generation, I don't think we can rely on Monte Carlo type methods to prove our point (well, those are kind of separate anyway). It might call our attention to something potentially interesting (much in the way that Julia Galef describes correlation as a phenomenon that whispers to us "Pssst! Look over here!" , but it does not form a conclusive case. I have done many simulations before where the closed-form solution was known with certainty (say 50%), yet the average result was at least as far off as what you're getting here. Might it not be the case that whatever epsilon you choose, you just need a sufficiently high N in order to get in the neighborhood?

I may take pen to paper with this out of curiosity, and see if I get anywhere. [edit: I'm not sure you defined the problem unambiguously enough for me to get very far, unfortunately]

You may be right that the hot hand claim does not imply that shooting percentages will approach 100%, but does the notion not say that a hit is more likely after a series of hits? Then what will bring about mean reversion? Random, "unlucky" misses? So to keep it simple, if you are a 50% FG shooter and experience +++, the hot hand suggests the prob of the next shot is higher. Let's say 60% for sake of argument. If you score, the next one is higher yet. If you miss, are you saying that the probability of the 5th shot would then be less than 60%? Less than 50%? In between? It's like a moving average with some perturbation based on recent success?

My understanding is that there is no convincing empirical evidence that hot hand exists, though there may be some disagreement over what the formal definition is, or what hypothesis should be tested.

[LastRowFan]

From the WSJ http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hot-hand-debate-gets-flipped-on-its-head-1443465711

-----------------------
Los Angeles Clippers guard J.J. Redick once studied the hot hand with a psychologist’s dream lab rat: himself.

For a college statistics course, Redick experimented in Duke’s gym by attempting 100 shots per day for a week, recording not only the result of every attempt but also how he felt at the time. What happened when he thought he was hot? “Every day was the same thing,” he said. “No matter what I thought I was feeling, makes or misses, it was plus or minus the statistic I was looking for.”

Redick says that helps him keep poor shooting nights in perspective. Last season, through five games, Redick was shooting 23% on 3-pointers, which would’ve been his worst shooting season ever. “The media kept asking me about it,” he said. “But at some point I’m going to start making shots and my percentage will be in the 40s. Then it’ll be like: Oh, he’s on fire!” Redick was right. He ended up shooting 43.7% on threes—slightly above his lifetime average of 40%.

One person who was happy to hear Redick recalled his study was his professor. Duke statistician David Banks wasn’t aware that his old student is now in the NBA. He also says he has never seen a full basketball game. “I have to confess,” he said, “it just strikes me as incredibly dull.” When told of Redick’s whereabouts, though, Banks said: “I’m delighted. It’s always gratifying when my students aren’t living in refrigerator boxes behind bus stations.”

[gus]

From the WSJ http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hot-hand-debate-gets-flipped-on-its-head-1443465711

-----------------------
Los Angeles Clippers guard J.J. Redick once studied the hot hand with a psychologist’s dream lab rat: himself.

For a college statistics course, Redick experimented in Duke’s gym by attempting 100 shots per day for a week, recording not only the result of every attempt but also how he felt at the time. What happened when he thought he was hot? “Every day was the same thing,” he said. “No matter what I thought I was feeling, makes or misses, it was plus or minus the statistic I was looking for.”

Redick says that helps him keep poor shooting nights in perspective. Last season, through five games, Redick was shooting 23% on 3-pointers, which would’ve been his worst shooting season ever. “The media kept asking me about it,” he said. “But at some point I’m going to start making shots and my percentage will be in the 40s. Then it’ll be like: Oh, he’s on fire!” Redick was right. He ended up shooting 43.7% on threes—slightly above his lifetime average of 40%.

One person who was happy to hear Redick recalled his study was his professor. Duke statistician David Banks wasn’t aware that his old student is now in the NBA. He also says he has never seen a full basketball game. “I have to confess,” he said, “it just strikes me as incredibly dull.” When told of Redick’s whereabouts, though, Banks said: “I’m delighted. It’s always gratifying when my students aren’t living in refrigerator boxes behind bus stations.”

JJ clearly doesn't know what he's talking about. Anyone who's played basketball at any level knows that the hot hand exists.

I can't read the article (not a subscriber), but I have to think Banks has to be pulling the interviewer's leg.

[darthur]

Darthur,

Though I have a degree in math from our favorite revenue sport school, I've been out of the proof business for quite some time. And was more of an applied guy anyway. Nevertheless, I would like to see something more closed-form to prove your claim, instead of the fact that you did a million simulations and this is what you came up with.

Well I do too, but alas I could not come up with a closed form expression for a general N. However, it's easy to analyze a specific N by hand. Let's look at N=5. So I'm doing 5 coin flips. The article takes as granted that E[occurrences of HHHH / occurrences of HHHT + occurrences of HHHH] = E[occurrences of TTTH / occurrences of TTTH + occurrences of TTTT]. (I'm going to assume you believe me on this and focus on the mathematical question.) Anyway, this statement is not true.

First of all, it's not even well defined because there could be 0 occurrences of HHHH or HHHT, so this is an expected value of a random variable that is sometimes 0/0. To try to give the article the benefit of the doubt, let's condition the expectation on the fact that HHHT or HHHT occurs at least once, which I think best matches what they did. (In my simulation, I cheated a different way by saying 0/0 = 0.5). Anyway, by symmetry, the claim is equivalent to saying E[occurrences of HHHH / occurrences of HHHT + occurrences of HHHH] = 0.5.

So for N=5, here are the sets of coin flips with at least one occurrence of HHHT or HHHH, and the value of #HHHH/#HHHT+#HHHH. Each of these is equally likely:

HHHHH: 2/2
HHHHT: 1/2
HHHTT: 0/1
HHHTH: 0/1
THHHH: 1/1
THHHT: 0/1

The average is (1 + 0.5 + 0 + 0 + 1 + 0) / 6 < 0.5. But notice that the expected number of occurrences of HHHT and HHHH are the same. It's just the ratio doesn't behave in a way you'd expect.


Unless there's been a revolution in random number generation, I don't think we can rely on Monte Carlo type methods to prove our point (well, those are kind of separate anyway). It might call our attention to something potentially interesting (much in the way that Julia Galef describes correlation as a phenomenon that whispers to us "Pssst! Look over here!" , but it does not form a conclusive case.

As it turns out, I did a PhD in algorithm theory with a focus on randomization after Duke, so this is something I can speak to with confidence :). It is very possible to prove things rigorously about the output of a randomized algorithm if you know what you're doing. Suppose the real expected value of this distribution is 0.5. By the Chernoff bounds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernoff_bound - see the last special case), I calculate there is ~99% chance that the average of my 1000000 trials should be at least 0.4985. In other words, there's no bloody way I could get results so consistently low (unless I made a mistaken in my calculation or implementation of course!).


You may be right that the hot hand claim does not imply that shooting percentages will approach 100%, but does the notion not say that a hit is more likely after a series of hits? Then what will bring about mean reversion? Random, "unlucky" misses? So to keep it simple, if you are a 50% FG shooter and experience +++, the hot hand suggests the prob of the next shot is higher. Let's say 60% for sake of argument. If you score, the next one is higher yet. If you miss, are you saying that the probability of the 5th shot would then be less than 60%? Less than 50%? In between? It's like a moving average with some perturbation based on recent success?

My understanding is that there is no convincing empirical evidence that hot hand exists, though there may be some disagreement over what the formal definition is, or what hypothesis should be tested.

I agree there's a lot of uncertainty. I just claim you could imagine something like a "hot hand" (whatever that means exactly) that could be a sane model. Whether that would be the right model is a big question, and it does seem as you say that there's not much empirical evidence for it.

[swood1000]

No one denies the existence of streaks. Streaks happen even in random coin flipping, as others have noted above (4 heads in a row, 6.25% of the time, on average). As noted, random streaks occur more often than most people think. The denial of hot hand does mean streaks don't happen. It means that they can't be reliably identified in advance at a rate greater than chance. It also means that, upon the ex-post identification of a streak, the odds of the next shot going in are not really changed from the player's average skill (say, corrected for quality of defense).
When people talk about a hot hand they are referring to an enhanced psychological and/or physical state that makes success more likely while that state persists. You imply that if the hot hand phenomenon were real it would be possible to reliably identify streaks in advance but I don't follow that. To say that a person has had a hot hand for his last five shots does not require us to say that this state will persist, although that might be likely.


It seems to me that if the hot hand were real, there would be no reversion to the mean. Under hot hand, a player who started hitting a few in a row would logically hit the next few at a higher % chance. This keeps going, hitting at a higher and higher rate until they are deadeye perfect! It doesn't happen. If the hot hand theory were real, you need a theory to explain how and why it stops. If you say, "cold hand", well, good luck identifying in advance when that switch from hot to cold takes place. At some point, the notion starts sounding like epicycles or something.
Don't follow this either. If we don't know what causes hot hands then what reason do we have for predicting that the player will continue being hot instead of reverting to his normal performance level? If we think of a hot hand as being 125% of the player's normal effectiveness then it stays at that level. Why would it inch higher and higher?


Those who think they can predict hot hand should take their talents to Las Vegas. Identifying "hot hands" ex post isn't really what the notion of "hot hand" is all about. It is: should you pass to the guy (or gal) with the hot hand, even if their shooting % is lower than someone else that is available to shoot it? The question is: is the player in an enhanced state in which he or she has a temporary shooting % that is higher than that of another player who is available to shoot it. When I look at the recent championship MBB game it appears to me that during the latter part of that game Coach K was directing the ball into the hands of Grayson Allen at a higher than normal rate because he believed that Grayson was hot. Was Coach K wrong to do that?

[freshmanjs]

The World Series presents an opportunity to test how you feel about the idea of a player on a "hot streak".

- Throughout his career, Daniel Murphy has averaged 1 HR every 14.6 games (or 58.4 PA).
- In the 2015 playoffs, Murphy has averaged 1 HR every 1.3 games (or 5.6 PA).

That's about as "hot" as you will ever see a player.

Now consider the following hypothetical scenario. What it someone offered to give you free courtside final four tickets for life if you answered the following question correctly.

"Will Daniel Murphy hit at least one home run in the 2015 World Series?"

How would you answer?

Given that Murphy will likely get 20-30 PA in the World Series, mostly against above average pitching, your personal answer says a lot about how you feel about the idea of a player on a hot streak. If you think perceived hot streaks are mostly a factor of randomness, you would probably answer "no" to the question above. If you believe hot streaks are a significant factor in athlete performance, you would probably answer "yes".

Now, whether or not Murphy actually hits a home run won’t say much about whether hot streaks really exist (too small a sample), but your answer to the question above may reveal something about how you feel about the topic.

no would have been the winner.

[MChambers]

Found an article today on this topic. Haven't read it yet, since I'm work and actually working, for the most part, but I figured if I posted the link here someone would read it and summarize it here:

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/08/how-researchers-discovered-the-basketball-hot-hand.html

Matt

[cato]

Found an article today on this topic. Haven't read it yet, since I'm work and actually working, for the most part, but I figured if I posted the link here someone would read it and summarize it here:

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/08/how-researchers-discovered-the-basketball-hot-hand.html

Matt

Spoiler alert: Rosencrantz was right.