Bowlers strike with a hot hand, too

Is the so-called "hot hand" phenomenon in sports a reality or just an illusion based on misperception of random sequences? For the second time in recent months, a Yale study supports the notion that it is real. The study appears online in the journal PLoS One. The "hot hand" phenomenon refers to the belief that an athlete is more likely to make successful shots if the previous shots were successful. But until recently, there was no scientific evidence to support the existence of this phenomenon. Last October, Gur Yaari, computational biologist at Yale School of Medicine, and colleague Shmuel Eisenmann demonstrated the existence of the phenomenon in basketball. They showed that there was a significant increase in basketball players' chances of hitting the second free throw in a two-shot series compared to the first one, and that the probability of hitting the second shot is greater following a hit than a miss. It was unclear, however, whether there was a cause and effect (causal) connection between the result of one shot and the next.