3 ms·

> (3) not every streak is a hot streak, so the real infrequent, but persistent hot hands get diluted; no true scotsman would have a not-hot streak.

• aetherson 12y ago
  On a purely mathematical level, though, you can see how this could be true. Like, take basketball out of the equation. Let's say I code up a button. When you press it, it shows a screen that says "You scored!" or "You failed to score. :(" Now, I code the button to generally say "you scored" 1/2 of the time, and "you failed to score :(" 1/2 of the time. But I also code it to say that on 1% of all scores, it enters a "hot streak" mode where for the next ten button presses, it's 80% likely to score. We would agree, yes, that this button has hot streaks? But now suppose that you look across a large dataset for periods of ten button pushes in which more than 7 of them are scores. Those are streaks of scores. Some of those are going to be because the button is in hot streak mode. But some of them are just going to be because the normal 50% chance clustered. Now, is my button anything like a good model for how basketball works? I have no idea. But the sentence "not all streaks are hot streaks" is not self-evidently crazy.
  • Terr_ 12y ago
    Or to pick at the semantics a bit: Not all streaks indicate causality. Some are random artifacts. Easy enough to prove by flipping a coin. Streaks naturally happen and should be expected from randomness.