Hot hand fallacy

What is the Hot-Hand Fallacy?

The hot-hand fallacy is an unjustified belief that a recent run of success makes further success more likely. The important word is “unjustified.” Some processes have genuinely changing probabilities; others do not.

For independent coin tosses, a run of heads does not make another head more likely. Skilled performance is more complicated. A basketball player's performance can depend on conditions that a coin does not have.

Is the hot hand in basketball a fallacy?

Gilovich, Vallone, and Tversky (1985) originally interpreted basketball shooting data as evidence against a hot hand. But Miller and Sanjurjo (2018) identified a statistical selection bias. Correcting it reversed the conclusion of the canonical analysis.

Calling every belief in a shooting streak a cognitive error gets ahead of the evidence. The question is whether a recent run predicts performance in the situation being studied. Neither the streak itself nor the label “fallacy” settles that question.

The gambler's fallacy points in the other direction: it treats a run as making a reversal more likely.