The Hot Hand in Basketball: On the Misperception of Random Sequences

Details

Photo

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Name

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Year

1985

Sport / Domain

Basketball / cognitive bias

One big idea

What looks like a shooting streak can just be random noise dressed up as momentum.

Good for

Killing pub myths about “form” over a small run of games or shots.

My take

Read this once and you’ll never trust a commentator who says “he just wanted it more” after three shots in a row.