GROSS.
I've been reading a lot lately about one of my favorite subjects, neuroscience, in conjunction with sports. I am fascinated by sports: statistics, drafts, the whole shebang, but woefully undereducated about it. thankfully I am seeing someone who seems to be able to answer any random question I have about a player or team or rule. also, he knows a lot about beer. hmm.
I also like reading about probability, and how randomness rules the roost. so neuroscience, probability, and sports combined make for some interesting thoughts. like an analysis of whether in basketball, a player's 'hot streak' is actually real. it's amazing how much the idea of psyching oneself out effects gameplay. I found out that the fake nature of basketball shooting streaks was first demonstrated by Amos Tversky and Thomas Gilovich, a psychologist at Cornell. they began the investigation by sifting through years of Philadelphia 76er statistics. They looked at every single shot taken by ever single player, and recorded whether or not that shot had been preceded by a string of hits or misses. If "the hot hand" was a real phenomenon, then players should have a higher field goal percentage after making several previous shots. The streak should, hypothetically, improve their game! *full disclosure, I don't even know if the 76ers are still a team, or if they are any good. but apparently they were ridiculously amazing for a time being.
the dudes found there was absolutely no evidence of "the hot hand". a guy's chance of making a shot was not affected by whether or not their previous shots had gone in. each field goal (again something I thought was only in football) attempt was its own independent event. the short runs experienced by the 76ers were no different than the short runs that naturally emerge from any random process. jumpshots were like flipping a coin. the streaks were a figment of our imagination.
Andrew Toney, the shooting guard, was particularly hard to convince: during the regular season, Tooney made 46 percent of all of his shots. after hitting three shots in a row--a sure sign that he was now "in the zone"--Tooney's field goal percentage dropped to 34 percent. when Tooney thought he was "hot," he was actually freezing cold. and when he thought he was cold, he was just getting warmed up: after missing three shots in a row, Tooney made 52 percent of his shots, which was significantly higher than his normal average.
now if all this jazz about the 76ers isn't interesting, because maybe you're lame, or maybe you're a loyalist, let's check out the Bird-era Celtics. his time, they looked at free throw attempts, and not just field goals. the science dudes found absolutely no evidence of hot hands. Larry Bird was just like Andrew Tooney: after making several free throws in a row, his free throw percentage actually declined. Bird got dumb, and started missing shots he should have made.
apparently there was always one exception to the hot-hand rule, and that is Dimaggio's 56 game hitting streak in 1941. but the 1940's was lamesauce and I'm more interested in mustachioed basketball players with shorts up to their balls and goofy faces. *ps, Stephen Jay Gould, famous science dude and guest star on the Simpsons, proved that even a 56 game hitting streak will naturally emerge from the history of baseball.......
*well that was fun. I feel smarter now. too smart, even. so I now I need to go think about items I might like to purchase.
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