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Comment by magpi3 | Hacker News Reader

Interesting paper, but as a former basketball but, I disagree with the premise that free throws have anything to do with a "hot hand."

To me a hot hand is only something that can exist in the flow of the game. It is not about making shots. It is about making contested shots and quick decisions. A player with a hot hand is one that is feeling especially focused and confident for a specific period of time. Ideally a player tries to hold onto their focus and confidence for the entire game, but unless they have a Buddha-like nature that is just not possible.

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I completely agree. Reminds me of my hot streaks when playing FPS games, specifically when I played TF2. Normally I'm a mediocre engineer, pyro or solder. But something about playing the spy gave me a rush at times where I could rack up well over a hundred kills on the map. And there were a few times I topped 200 in a map. But once I lost focus, I crashed hard and I would stop playing for the day.

The original paper only covered free throws as one of three examples of the hot hand fallacy. The other examples were of shooting in the normal run of play.

http://node101.psych.cornell.edu/sec/pubPeople/tdg1/Gilo.Val...

more recent statistical analyses have found evidence for a hot hand effect, though.

i also don't necessarily like calling it a fallacy, as i've definitely run into some people who misinterpret that word, basically assuming that there can never be autocorrelation in data, and anyone who thinks there is must be falling prey to a logical fallacy.

I kind of disagree.

In the flow of the game, it's hard for hot hand to exist and what you describe is `the zone`. But in a free throws game, there surely is a hot hand. I always get the first few hit/miss, but when I finally feel calibrated with my stance and my hand `whip` and get a hit I like, then the next one is probably a hit again and after that I can streak for at least 4-5 shots.

> A player with a hot hand is one that is feeling especially focused and confident for a specific period of time

Yeah, like Kay Thompson dropping 37 points in 1 quarter and not missing any shoots. Even himself seems confused about what’s going on.

Case further in point, MJ with "The Shrug Game"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daP4JysFcUg

Means nothing. Get a thousand people to toss a coin 20 times in a row. Repeat 82 times each. Someone probably throws 20 heads in a row. Monte Carlo sim it.

That model I've just described does not disprove the hot hand. It does show that an occasion of a good shooting run also is not evidence that it exists.

Agree entirely. Free throws are a different matter than in-game shots.

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