The Hot Hand in Actual Game Situations

Abstract

Streaks of success have always fascinated people and a lot of research has been conducted to identify whether the "hot hand" effect is real. While sports have provided an appropriate platform for studying this phenomenon, the majority of existing literature examines scenarios in a vacuum with results that might or might not be applicable in the wild. In this report, we build on the existing literature and develop an appropriate framework to quantify the extend to which success can come in streaks -- beyond the stroke of chance -- in a natural environment. Considering actual basketball game situations, our results provide strong statistical evidence that the hot hand exists in this setting. Even though our results are based on a sports setting, we believe that our study provides a path towards thinking of the hot hand outside of laboratory-like, controlled environment. This is crucial if we want to use similar results to enhance our decision making and better understand short and long term outcomes of repeated decisions.