When an athlete is doing well, commentators may describe him as being "hot" or "on fire," but scientists have generally thought that such streaks were primarily in the eye of the beholder -- until now. Today in the online journal PLoS ONE, researchers report an analysis of five years of NBA free-throws that supports what is called the "hot hand" phenomenon: that a streak of positive outcomes is likely to continue.
This phenomenon had largely been considered a product of human perception since its coining in 1985, but in this case the researchers were able to use a very large data set (more than 300,000 free throws) to show strong support for the hot hand phenomenon at the individual level. This result sets the stage for further physiological and psychological investigations of the origin of this phenomenon.
According to the authors, "It [the research] sheds new light on an old question that had two contradicting answers: scientists used to treat it as a mis-perception of random patterns by human subjects, while typical sport's fans were convinced in its real existence. The evidence supplied in this research, supports the fans view and opens the door for new physiological and psychological investigations of the origin of this phenomenon.
Furthermore, while the example studied here came from the sporting world, "the implications are much more far reaching," the authors write.
Citation: Yaari G, Eisenmann S (2011) The Hot (Invisible?) Hand: Can Time Sequence Patterns of Success/Failure in Sports Be Modeled as Repeated Random Independent Trials?. PLoS ONE 6(10): e24532. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0024532
Financial Disclosure: Yale University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem supported this research. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interest Statement: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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