Talk:Hot hand

Representation of more recent studies
Currently the literature review seems to suggest that more recent studies broadly support the hot hand effect. While that may be the case, some kind of more comprehensive analysis should be done, as even cursory analysis gives studies like: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2984615 which seem methodologically rigorous and show no results. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.161.98.85 (talk) 01:21, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

Untitled
The article states: "In fact statistics show that the probability of a streak goes down as the streak continues." I don't have time to listen to the radio cast it references, but the external link states that at least in basketball shooting this is false: each shot is statistically an independent event. While the cited article is rather old (1984), it nevertheless is the only source I have seen on the matter, so I question that statement's veracity. Eebster the Great (talk) 06:45, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I think you're right, statistically speaking. It's like flipping a coin. The outcome of each flip is independent from its predecessor. Although, in basketball, other factors may enter, such has team morale, home town support etc. MathewTownsend (talk) 04:58, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Sure-except that later studies showed a shooter who makes the first free throw is more likely to make the second free throw.

This article is a laughable joke-psychobabble from the 80's and 90's that has been disproven in everything from horseshoes and bowling to volleyball. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.224.251.239 (talk) 18:42, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Problem with the definition
"It is the belief that a shot is more likely to go in if it is taken after a shot that has gone in, and a shot is more likely to miss if it is taken after a shot that has missed." Who says that's the definition of the "hot hand theory"? As a major sports fan I think that hardly anybody would define it that way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Statalyzer (talk • contribs) 03:35, 7 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Indeed, I think that a "hot hand" is ascribed to a player who is making a particularly high percentage of his shots, rather than one who simply has made his last shot. Similarly, a "cold hand" is a player who has missed a lot of shots, not just the last one. I am. OT sure how this affects the idea of the "hot hand fallacy", since I can see where various external and internal factors can effect a given player's success: how he is being defended, teammates getting or not getting the ball to him in a good scoring situation, the player's mental and physical state etc. Wschart (talk) 19:17, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Science News article about this
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/337618/title/Big_score_for_the_hot_hand shows research and presents arguments and studies for it existing or not existing. This can be used as a resource to make a neutral and complete article.  D r e a m Focus  08:42, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Hello I am a Dickinson college student who has been assigned to edit this page for a psychology class. This is what I am thinking of adding to the page: Hot hand is also very prevalent in many different sports, basketball especially. This occurs when other player believe that because a player has made previous shots they are more likely to make the next shot. [1] would this be okay to add? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Whitev74 (talk • contribs) 02:58, 29 February 2012 (UTC)
 * What college level textbooks or other reliable sources do you have mentioning it? Can you write out the names of some of them, using them as a reference for something you add?   D r e a m Focus  14:59, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

These are the resources I am planning on using in editing this article. Raab, M., Gula, B., & Gigerenzer, G. (2011). The hot hand exists in volleyball and is used for allocation decisions. Journal Of Experimental Psychology: Applied, doi:10.1037/a0025951 This study focuses on the effect that hot-hand fallacy has on behavior and the way we think of success and failure. how in believing in the hot-hand can change our perceptions of success. It also is a comment on the Koehler atricle listed below and provides another perspective on the same information to paint more comprehensive picture of the hot-hand fallacy.

Castel, A. D., Drolet Rossi, A., & McGillivray, S. (2012). Beliefs about the “hot hand” in basketball across the adult life span. Psychology And Aging, doi:10.1037/a0026991 This article has a primary focus is on basketball and i could expand on that in this article because as it stands there is not much on the topic.

Roney, C. R., & Trick, L. M. (2009). Sympathetic magic and perceptions of randomness: The hot hand versus the gambler's fallacy.Thinking & Reasoning, 15(2), 197-210. doi:10.1080/13546780902847137 This article mentions gamblers fallacy as well as the hot-hand and is broader in scope than just basketball or sports related. The article compares the hot-hand and gamblers fallacy, this can be used to make a better distinction between the two.

Alter, A. L., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2006). From a fixation on sports to an exploration of mechanism: The past, present, and future of hot hand research. Thinking & Reasoning, 12(4), 431-444. doi:10.1080/13546780600717244 This study focuses on how we can understand the hot-hand fallacy and instead of using that they suggest using a mechanistic approach to better understand how humans understand probability. I will primarily use the mechanistic accounts section of the article to learn more about the underlying causes of the hot-hand fallacy.

Colaresi, M. P., & Thompson, W. R. (2002). Hot spots or hot hands? Serial crisis behavior, escalating risks, and rivalry. The Journal Of Politics, 64(4), 1175-1198. doi:10.1111/1468-2508.00168

Koehler, J. J., & Conley, C. A. (2003). The 'hot hand' myth in professional basketball. Journal Of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 25(2), 253-259. Koehler's article looks specifically at the hot-hand fallacy in association with the basketball specifically the NBA in a 3 point shootout contest and examines the sequential data it produced. There is a interesting section that on announcer spontaneous temperature outbursts that would be good to add.

Forlani, D., & Walker, O. r. (2003). Valenced attributions and risk in new-product decisions: How why indicates what's next. Psychology & Marketing, 20(5), 395-432. doi:10.1002/mar.10079

Oskarsson, A. T., Van Boven, L., McClelland, G. H., & Hastie, R. (2009). What's next? Judging sequences of binary events. Psychological Bulletin, 135(2), 262-285. doi:10.1037/a0014821 This article is very comprehensive an provides a lot of information on hot-hand and sequence judgments. This article examines the cognitive processes that lead humans to think the way they do. This will most likely be my primary source document for editing this page.

Johnson, J., Tellis, G. J., & Macinnis, D. J. (2005). Losers, Winners, and Biased Trades. Journal Of Consumer Research, 32(2), 324-329. doi:10.1086/432241 Whitev74 (talk) 20:47, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

I will be working on my edits in my sandbox User:whitev74/sandbox —Preceding undated comment added 23:00, 27 March 2012 (UTC).

DYK
Whitev74 (talk) 16:50, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Basketball
How the throw can be indipendent? Then we dont't know the probability at all. We are dealing with real basketball players here and the only probability is that which refers to old connected throws. Let's say one player has a probability of scoring free throw 60%, that means that if he let's say had 100 free throws, he scored 60 of them. So if he scores a next one, his probality of hitting would increase to 61% Why not?84.52.128.62 (talk) 22:37, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Opposing Viewpoints
There has been a slew of recent research that finds evidence in favor of the hot hand. The article should mention these.

http://www.sloansportsconference.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/2014_SSAC_The-Hot-Hand-A-New-Approach.pdf

From the abstract: "The vast literature on the Hot Hand Fallacy in basketball rests on the assumption that shot selection is independent of player-perceived hot or coldness. In this paper, we challenge this assumption...Our estimates of the Hot Hand effect range from 1.2 to 2.4 percentage points in increased likelihood of making a shot."

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2627354

From the abstract: "We find a subtle but substantial bias in a standard measure of the conditional dependence of present outcomes on streaks of past outcomes in sequential data...Upon correcting for the bias, the conclusions of some prominent studies in the literature are reversed."

Dshin (talk) 02:49, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

'Random Event'?
The lead sentence currently reads "The 'hot-hand fallacy' (also known as the "hot hand phenomenon" or "hot hand") is the sometimes fallacious belief that a person who has experienced success with a seemingly random event has a greater chance of further success in additional attempts." I'm struggling with the "seemingly random event" portion of this sentence. As the lead paragraph goes on to note, "The concept has been applied primarily to sports..." One of the things about sports is that things like throwing a basketball into a hoop is more about skill, than a random event. A 'hot hand' would be a guy who is able to put the ball through the hoop with better precision than normal. But, I don't think there's anything particular 'random' about that. Am I missing something? Or, should we just delete 'with a seemingly random event' from the sentence?


 * That is why it says "seemingly random". To a casual observer watching basketball, it might appear that players make free throws about half the time, with no obvious pattern. Thus it seems random. Roger (talk) 19:57, 13 July 2017 (UTC)


 * "Random" does not mean fifty-fifty. The success of a person throwing a ball always has a random element, unless the hit rate is 100%. The hit rate is a function of skill, but it is still a probability and subject to random fluctuations - you should not expect that the hit rate in one hundred throws is the same as in the next hundred.
 * A "hot hand" is not "a guy who is able to put the ball through the hoop with better precision than normal", but "a time when a guy is able to put the ball through the hoop with better precision than the same guy at other times". --Hob Gadling (talk) 20:11, 13 July 2017 (UTC)


 * It's always seemed strange to me that sports like baseball and basketball are perpetually used by statisticians as examples of "random" data. You say it doesn't mean fifty-fifty, but the 1985 paper expressly analogizes the "Hot Hand in Basketball" to coin tosses. Even if they tried to eliminate 'external factors', the main factor is the skill of the player, not to mention their exhaustion level, emotional mood, psychological state, whether they banged their knee on the last play, etc. Larry Bird had an 88.6% career free throw average. Clearly, it was objectively more likely he would sink any given shot, and indeed successive shots, than random chance would predict. He rarely slumped and was relied on for his dependable consistency every game. One wouldn't use Garry Kasparov's win/loss record as a pool of random data for pure statistics, and at the level of professional sports it's not vastly different. If a free throw shot is missed and the ball bounces around the rim, it's due to a lack or lapse in the player's skill, not because some random kinetic forces pushed it off target.
 * At any rate, you mention that "you should not expect that the hit rate in one hundred throws is the same as in the next hundred"; however, this is exactly what the "Hot Hand Fallacy" researchers claimed was the case. A substantially fluctuating hit rate would seem to support the idea of streaks; a guy playing "with better precision than the same guy at other times" as you put it.
 * This article is improved with the inclusion of more recent research which shows a clear, erroneous bias effect in the previous 'debunking' of the so-called fallacy. Nevertheless it could still use a lot of work, especially dealing with 'proposed explanations for belief in the fallacy' section and the like, in light of the newer evidence supporting the validity of streaks. Of course streaks can only exist with non-random data, which again seems to be a sticky issue for this subject. E.g: "In terms of judging random sequences the general conclusion was that people do not have a statistically correct concept of random [sic]." As an aside, it seems like this kind of facile disparaging tone has become the most prevalent editorial voice of WP, yet this article illustrates how myopic this 'skeptical' agenda can be. -AveVeritas (talk) 06:25, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

I take issue with calling the hot hand "a random event" at all. It can certainly be *modelled* as a random process, but there is nothing about the act of shooting a basketball (for example) where randomness is necessarily introduced. In fact, some take the philosophical stance that there is no irreducible randomness in nature. I would recommend removing the phrase "with a random event". 129.97.124.17 (talk) 00:42, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

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Proposed renaming
I suggest we rename this Hot-hand belief as it is very much in dispute whether it is a fallacy or not. 108.254.160.23 (talk) 04:18, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The same may apply to other so-called fallacies or pseudo-fallacies, so I am not sure we shoudn't call things by what they are called. Limit-theorem (talk) 12:28, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd like to make this a more formal proposal to rename to the more neutral title of "Hot-hand (sports)". There are two primary reasons for this: 1) the vast majority of experts (be it athletes, coaches, statisticians, etc.) do not (or no longer) use the term "hot hand fallacy". The vast majority of content that use that name either reference only the 1985 TGV article or place the word fallacy in quotation marks to indicate the dispute. Not to say this is authoritative, but a Google search of "hot hand phenomenon" brings up 42 times as many results as "hot hand fallacy". Far more content seems to use the term "hot hand" unqualified. 2) more importantly, this is a NPOV issue. Calling something a fallacy implies immediately that it is false, and it diminishes the debate around it. JakeH07 (talk) 02:37, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 29 May 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: consensus to move the page to Hot hand, per the discussion below; the disambiguation page is now at Hot hand (disambiguation). Dekimasu よ! 19:09, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Hot-hand fallacy → Hot-hand (sports) – The current name creates a NPOV issue; calling this a fallacy implies it is false, thus discounting the vast debate over the subject today. In addition, the preponderance of modern evidence supports a hot hand, with some commentators jokingly calling denying this the "hot hand fallacy fallacy". Leading statistician and political scientist Andrew Gelman has commented on this several times (evidence summary and comment on the "fallacy fallacy"). Finally, the vast majority of content on this subject simply refer to the "hot hand" unqualified, and most that include the term "fallacy" either reference only the 1985 TGV article or place the word fallacy in quotation marks to indicate the dispute. Not to say this is authoritative, but a Google search of "hot hand phenomenon" brings up 42 times as many results as "hot hand fallacy". Taken together, I think a more NPOV name is necessary JakeH07 (talk) 02:53, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. The main issue is that Hot-hand is currently unoccupied, so even if we were to rename it, the disambiguation wouldn't be necessary. But moreover, this concept doesn't have much to do with sports per se but with the cognitive error in regards to betting or predictions of future performance. I see no NPOV concern with the title. I could perhaps get behind a move to hot hand and moving (or just ditching) the sparse disambiguation page that's there. We'd also need some discussion about the hyphen or no-hyphen forms of the phrase. I believe no-hyphen is more common, but that might be a regional thing. -- Netoholic @  03:55, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Move to hot hand (as the primary topic, and move the dab page) or hot hand (sports and gambling) (no hyphen): The article title should present the concept, not declare it to be nonsense, since in some contexts, the concept is not necessarily a fallacy. But if "hot-hand" becomes a noun phrase rather than an adjective phrase, the hyphen should be removed. And the concept applies at least as much to gambling as it does to sports. —BarrelProof (talk) 04:37, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose. See Unicorn. Doesn't exist, is mentioned as not existing in reliable sources, has an article. As long as the article clearly says what the evidence says, there is no problem here. --Hob Gadling (talk) 05:36, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Move to hot hand Per User:BarrelProof and WP:DIFFCAPS.ZXCVBNM (TALK) 05:37, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Move to hot hand. A quick glance at the sources doesn't show any hyphen usage, and the article itself doesn't generally use the hyphen, so no idea why it's in the title.  Intro can clearly state that it is considered a fallacy or at least usually wrong in the lede.  SnowFire (talk) 19:30, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Move to hot hand per above. —  AjaxSmack  20:19, 29 May 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Clarifying difference between sports and psychological contexts
Hello - I am a behavioral scientist contributing to the Psychology and Economics WikiProjects as a member of the fall 2018 Wikipedia Fellows program.

I would like to disambiguate and extend the content on this page so it is easier for the reader to distinguish between the "hot hand" belief/phenomenon as it relates to the sports or human performance context in particular, and the "hot hand fallacy" as it relates to the cognitive bias that arises from faulty generalization (belief in the law of small numbers). I believe this disambiguation will produce a more neutral and complete review of the topic, and make it easier for the reader recognize the differences in the concept's definition across these two contexts. I'd like to add several sources to the page to enrich the discussion around the psychological bias, in particular a series of theoretical papers by Matthew Rabin (2002) and Matthew Rabin and Dmitri Vayanos (2005, 2011), and several accompanying empirical studies that provide experimental evidence in support of the Rabin and Vayanos work. I also plan to add several sources from the statistics, sports performance, and sports psychology literatures that specifically discuss cognitive, biological, and situational factors that may indeed produce local autocorrelation ("hot hand" phenomena) in series of human performances. Articulating and carefully separating the findings from these literatures - the former focused on situations where belief in local autocorrelation is fallacious, and the latter focused on situations where belief in local autocorrelation is well-founded - should address concerns I've observed in the discussions around both this page and the Gambler's fallacy page that characterizing these beliefs as wholly fallacious, or wholly reasonable, presents a decidedly biased (and incomplete) discussion.

I am working on a (currently very rough) draft of several sections (including the introduction) in my sandbox ( User:KnightDeathAndTheDevil/sandbox ). Please stop by and provide feedback, or reach out through my talk page.

KnightDeathAndTheDevil (talk) 03:06, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

The name of this article needs to be reverted to Hot Hand Fallacy
Hot Hand Fallacy is/was a cognitive social bias that was largely disproven. The bias was not called Hot Hand, this is/was about the specific cognitive social bias called Hot Hand Fallacy. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2627354