I recently spent ten days at Texas Tech University, where I subjected the faculty to a round of video blog posts.
As the fourth part of a four-part series, I asked Alan Reifman, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies :
Why do bowlers get a hot hand but basketball players don’t?
Alan is the expert on the hot hand. In fact, he has a blog and a forthcoming book about the topic. Frankly, I can’t add that much to the debate about whether streak shooting really exists in basketball except that I see both sides. The scientific side of me sees the data and the rigor in which the research is conducted and agree that the hot hand does not exist in the way the people believe. Yet the athletic side of me (who has played basketball since I was a teenage) has a hard time reconciling the data with the feeling that I have on the (rare) days that it feels like I can’t miss.