Streaks in independent trials are read as evidence of a temporary skill state.
Gilovich, Vallone and Tversky's 1985 paper found no streak effect in basketball shooting. Miller and Sanjurjo showed in 2018 that their method contained a subtle bias, and a small real hot hand survives — the original claim is now qualified rather than overturned.
In practice
- A fund manager with four good quarters is given more capital, which is a bet on a pattern the data barely supports.
- Note the correction: Miller and Sanjurjo showed the original method was biased, so a small genuine hot hand survives and the confident dismissal was also wrong.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is that streaks of the length people notice occur often in independent trials, so a real pattern is inferred from none. Another is that a genuine small effect exists and is masked in game data because defences tighten on a player who is scoring.
- In its favour
- People do over-read short streaks, which is well replicated, and the original paper reshaped how sports statistics are read.
- Against it
- Miller and Sanjurjo showed in 2018 that the original method contained a bias against finding streaks, and a small genuine hot hand survives correction, so the strong claim that the hot hand is purely illusory no longer holds.
- Standing
- Later work finds a small genuine hot-hand effect in some sports, so the original claim is qualified.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- The catalogue of predictable errors