Is that ballplayer ‘in the zone,’ or just lucky? A new challenge to statisticians’ skepticism
In the zone. In a groove. En fuego. Sports broadcasters—and fans—have coined any number of terrible clichés to describe an athlete, especially a basketball or a baseball player, on a hot streak. The idea that a player might have the “hot hand”—a greater chance of draining his next shot or driving his next pitch—is, to many people, a fact as undeniable as the numbers on the scoreboard itself.
To researchers, it’s something else: a problem to be solved. Do players really get hot—quantifiably? Or are we just seeing inevitable patterns in an ultimately random world?
It sounds like a minor question, but over the past 30 years, “hot hand studies” have become something of a subfield among behavioral economists, psychologists, and statisticians—in part because they like sports, yes. But it’s more than just that. As amateur athletes, playing golf on weekends or competing in over-30 basketball leagues, they’ve felt the hot hand at times. And they want to know: Is it real?...MUCH MORE
HT: Marginal Revolution
