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Comment by dionidium | Hacker News Reader

No one would sanely argue he wasn't having a tough time shooting but I'm sure a math nerd could explain this away with a large enough sample size

That's exactly what I would argue. I think the math nerd is right. Given consistent shot mechanics, we'd expect occasional "streaks". Unless you're proposing that circumstances may change the shooter's mechanics, I don't get what you're saying.

You don't say a batter has gone 2-for-3 through 6 innings when they really went 2-for-4

You're right that they don't do that sort of thing about a single game, but they say stuff like "last 5 of 7 batters" to refer to streaks across games all the time, which makes the example I quoted a straw man.

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"Unless you're proposing that circumstances may change the shooter's mechanics, I don't get what you're saying."

You think circumstances don't change the shooter's mechanics?

Consider that if a basketball player had perfectly consistent shot mechanics, and always shot from the same point on the court, he would always score. Shooting a basketball is a fairly deterministic ballistics problem--no wind since it's indoors, large target, large projectile. Thankfully, basketball gives us exactly that situation: free throws. The very best free throw shooters in the game only make 90% of free throws: http://www.basketball-reference.com/leaders/ft_pct_career.ht...

A basketball player who makes 45% of three point shots isn't some sort of machine which has a 45% probability of sinking any given three-pointer, he's a human being who varies in terms of age, physical condition, fatigue, and even psychology. When betting on black loses at the roulette wheel 16 times in a row that's pure math--when a human being misses 16 straight three point shots, it's more likely he's mentally and physically tired and his mechanics are shot.

The math nerd would be right Ray Allen is a good shooter. You can look over the course of his career and verify that. But that's not the issue with streaks in sports. The issue is that Ray Allen isn't a good shooter right now.

The idea that you "expect" something doesn't diminish its importance; especially when the Celtics need Ray Allen to hit threes to improve their chances of winning. They don't care that he's hit them in the past because previous scores don't count in current games.

I think you're missing my point. The question is about why he is missing so many shots in this game. Is it because he's cold or is it for the same reason that flipping a coin sometimes results in a series of heads? When heads comes up ten times in a row, you don't say that the coin isn't a 50/50 coin right now.

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