Friday, June 09, 2017

Major ESPN.com Article on Three-Pt Shooting Hot Hand

Today on ESPN.com, there's a big article on hot-hand research. The article is written primarily through the lens of Klay Thompson and his deep-launching Golden State Warriors teammates, but also discusses the 2015 research of Joshua Miller and Adam Sanjurjo, claiming a "substantial" hot-hand effect in the NBA All-Star three-point shooting contest.

In addition, Tom Gilovich, lead author on the 1985 study claiming no support for a hot hand, shares his thoughts in the ESPN article on how the Miller-Sanjurjo research may (or may not) have revolutionized how we should think about hot-hand effects. Gilovich, a longtime Cornell University psychology professor, notes that he has shared the Miller-Sanjurjo research with some Cornell mathematicians and that, "People with tremendous math skills are all over the map on this one."

My own take on the Miller-Sanjurjo research, from back in 2015, is available here. Be sure to see Miller's comments on my piece and my reply.

One side note on today's ESPN.com article is that, where author Tom Haberstroh alludes to the fact that, "The legendary Bobby Knight wasn't a fan of the so-called fallacy [claimed by Gilovich and colleagues], either," the embedded hyperlink leads to my book!

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As I note at the top of the blog, nearly all of my recent tracking of sports streaks has taken place via my Twitter feed, rather than this blog. My last blog posting before today, in fact, was all the way back on February 13. Just to update things, here are a couple of prominent hot-hand developments of the past four months:
  • As virtually all readers of this blog would know, the UConn women's basketball team had its latest gargantuan winning streak, one that had reached 111 games, snapped in the Final Four national semifinals by Mississippi State. Shortly afterward, I tweeted a graphic I created to show how Mississippi State milked the shot-clock to shorten the game against UConn.
  • Back in April, Guy Molyneux wrote in to Andrew Gelman's blog, arguing that, "the hot hand likely has a negligible impact on game outcomes." In the comments section below Molyneux's piece, Miller and several other discussants debate the argument.

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