Hot Hand by Alan Reifman

Pg 18 Results showed that if a bowler had just thrown 4 straight strikes, his probability of striking on the 5th attempt was considerably higher than was his strike probability if his 4 previous attempts had all been non-strikes

Pg 19 When simple motions can be performed repeatedly in quick succession, these conditions presumably allow an athlete, once he has been successful on one attempt, to retain a motor memory of how his body executed the successful maneuver, and do it again and again

Pg 41 In research involving large samples of games, conducted by different investigators, and looking at different seasons, evidence of streak hitting thus appears hard to come by

Pg 43 As 3 examples, researchers had concluded that there was little or no evidence for: batters maintaining “clutch-hitting ability from one year to the next; “streaky hitting”, and “protection” in baseball batting orders

Pg 54 We are sure of this: What DiMaggio did in 1941 has no chance, realistic or otherwise, of ever happening again (56-game hitting streak)

Pg 83 Small-numbers phenonmenon: Variation is more pronounced with small samples than with large ones. The larger your sample, the more stable your results will be. They will be less subject to the possibility that another study would produce greatly different results

Pg 134 Presentism: When brains plug holes in their conceptualizations of yesterday and tomorrow, they tend to use a material called today. If the present lightly colors our remembered pasts, it thoroughly infuses our imagined futures

Pg 136 We believe in “hot hands” because we must impart meaning to a pattern. And we like meanings that tell stories about heroism, valor, and excellence. We believe that long streaks and slumps must have direct causes internal to the sequence itself, and we have no feel for the frequency and length of sequences in random data

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