https://freerepublic.com/tag/hothand/ en-us Tue, 7 Jul 2009 11:08:38 GMT Focus Forum 15 https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2287131/posts The Wall Street Journal is helping Leonard Mlodinow tout his book The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. Among other things, Mlodinow, like academics Tversky, Kahneman, and Gilovich before him, wants to show that streaks in games like basketball don’t exist. Or, rather, they do exist, but they can be “explained by randomness.” Listen: randomness can’t explain anything. Statisticians imagine—I choose this word carefully—a basketball player has an ineffable probability of making a free throw, and they try to guess the probability’s value through modeling. Suppose a guess is 80% for a particular player and then suppose our player... https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2287131/posts#comment Tue, 7 Jul 2009 11:08:38 GMT