The California Institute of Technology (CalTech) ended its 207-game, 11-year losing streak in men's NCAA Division III basketball with a win over Bard College on Saturday night.

One might expect people at CalTech to have thought a lot about the streak, from the odds of the team finally winning a game to the physics of how to launch a successful shot at the basket. Indeed, as I just found during some web searching, Professor Colin Camerer has done some research on hot and cold hands, although not necessarily related to his own school's team. To learn about this research, go to Professor Camerer's faculty webpage, then scroll down to the section entitled, "Research background and details," and, finally, click on "Field studies: Cabs and basketball."

Also, Dean Oliver, author of the book Basketball on Paper and a statistical consultant for the Seattle SuperSonics, once played point guard for CalTech.

In honor of this occasion, I'll end with a cheer I also just discovered on the web. Variations of this cheer are said to have used by MIT, CalTech, and other quantitatively advanced schools:

E to the u du dx,
E to the x, dx.
Cosine, secant, tangent, sine,
3 point 1 4 1 5 9.
Integral, radical, mu, dv
Slipstick, sliderule, MIT!