Almost every sports fan seems to believe that many athletes are clutch performers who always come through while championships are on the line, while other athletes are chokers who can’t win the big one.
Sports fans are usually also followers of SportsCenter and other Entertainment shows, Pardon the Interruption and Around the Horn are two examples. I like sports very much, and I really love these programs as I am really a sports fan. What’s more, I also love them because of their significant content. The anchors concern critical thoughts in trying to figure out the reasons of ending scores, detect and explain patterns, and make predictions about future sports outcomes.
This is not truly so different from what study psychologists do. One difference is that these programs examine something that citizens really care about, which naturally entitles them to a great deal grander stage than the one occupied by academic psychology. Also, unlike academic publishing, SportsCenter is a well-oiled money-making machine if ever there was one. Sports anchors are expert journalists; that is, these folks can really sell it. Not sure I can speak the same about psychologists. I doubt I’m alone in thoughts that the thought of seeing Phil Zimbardo in a similar role is not particularly appealing.
But just as earnest tries at critical thoughts are often made on these sports programs, that doesn’t mean that they are successful tries. One more reason I like these programs is because of their many entertaining fallacies and biases. I’m noticing more and more that these biases are widespread and repeated regularly in the sports world. There are many examples I could gladly give here, but I’ll restrict myself to just a couple of high-profile and easily explicable “sports myths.”
One of these mythical phenomena I think everyone’s heard of is named the “hot hand” in basketball. Supposedly, while gamers get the hot hand, they have discovered their shooting stroke, so you should feed them the ball as much as possible. In technical terms, the belief in the hot hand is expressed thus: a made shot is more probable to occur following a previously made shot than following a missed shot, and vice-versa.
Just to annoy everyone, Tom Gilovich and colleagues examined archival shooting records from the Philadelphia 76ers, Boston Celtics, and Cornell Varsity men’s and women’s teams to see whether this phenomenon is for true. They looked specifically at whether there was a correlation between the outcomes of successive shots. The result: nope, no correlation. No such thing as the hot hand. Then why do we believe the hot hand exists? Because we tend to perceive meaning, purpose, and principle in totally random patterns where there is by definition nothing involved but randomness. If like most people you guessed “B” because it looks more random, you’re wrong. The answer is that these sequences are equally likely to occur. A purely random sequence is not necessarily a sequence without clumps in it. This does not reflect any type of systematic causal influence like a “hot coin,” it is simply the way that probability works. Sorry, Bob Knight, time to give the hot hand the ol’ heave-ho.
An additional legendary sports phenomenon is named the “Sports Illustrated jinx.” Supposedly, the performance of players and groups who grace the cover of Sports Illustrated is henceforward jinxed or cursed. Batters stop hitting the ball. Team winning percentage levels off. Sprinters turn out to be slower. You get the idea. Gilovich also explored this phenomenon and, naturally, concluded that it can be explained in terms of very simple statistics.
The Sports Illustrated jinx can be explained by a phenomenon named statistical regression. The idea here is that any outcome is due partly to the effect of at least one causal independent variable, and partly to what’s called error, or chance. For our purposes let’s let talent represent the independent variable, and luck the error. Imagine you’re an athlete. In order to get on the cover of Sports Illustrated, you definitely have to have everything working for you. You have to be talented and lucky for a while, and when you finally do get that coveted cover, your talent and luck will probably be at or around their absolute peak. Now, how long can you expect these factors to hold up? If you’re fortunate, your talent will hold up for a while. And it makes sense that it would; athletic talent is usually a pretty stable quality in a human being. However, should you also expect your luck to last? Of course not, at least not for very long.
That, in fact, is statistical regression. Extreme scores or observations will finally go back to what you would mainly expect given what you know. While that skinny lead-off hitter homers in five straight sports, you ought to be expecting that performance to level off, given what you know on the player’s power and ability. He got fortunate for a while, then his fortune ran out. People do not become unlucky, or any less gifted after showing on the cover of Sports Illustrated. It’s easily that the fortune they needed to get themselves there in the first place finally ran out.
Anyone with experience playing sports knows that clutch players and hot hands exist. On the other hand, I also think this illusion of causation is from fans neglecting declines and injuries in the whole sports populace. Not so many people ever look at players out of the spotlight whose arguably good career has declined in the same way featured players’ have.
Copyright by Lucy who likes shopping online, going fishing, often searches manchester united jersey and fashion things on the Internet.
Sports fans are usually also followers of SportsCenter and other Entertainment shows, Pardon the Interruption and Around the Horn are two examples. I like sports very much, and I really love these programs as I am really a sports fan. What’s more, I also love them because of their significant content. The anchors concern critical thoughts in trying to figure out the reasons of ending scores, detect and explain patterns, and make predictions about future sports outcomes.
This is not truly so different from what study psychologists do. One difference is that these programs examine something that citizens really care about, which naturally entitles them to a great deal grander stage than the one occupied by academic psychology. Also, unlike academic publishing, SportsCenter is a well-oiled money-making machine if ever there was one. Sports anchors are expert journalists; that is, these folks can really sell it. Not sure I can speak the same about psychologists. I doubt I’m alone in thoughts that the thought of seeing Phil Zimbardo in a similar role is not particularly appealing.
But just as earnest tries at critical thoughts are often made on these sports programs, that doesn’t mean that they are successful tries. One more reason I like these programs is because of their many entertaining fallacies and biases. I’m noticing more and more that these biases are widespread and repeated regularly in the sports world. There are many examples I could gladly give here, but I’ll restrict myself to just a couple of high-profile and easily explicable “sports myths.”
One of these mythical phenomena I think everyone’s heard of is named the “hot hand” in basketball. Supposedly, while gamers get the hot hand, they have discovered their shooting stroke, so you should feed them the ball as much as possible. In technical terms, the belief in the hot hand is expressed thus: a made shot is more probable to occur following a previously made shot than following a missed shot, and vice-versa.
Just to annoy everyone, Tom Gilovich and colleagues examined archival shooting records from the Philadelphia 76ers, Boston Celtics, and Cornell Varsity men’s and women’s teams to see whether this phenomenon is for true. They looked specifically at whether there was a correlation between the outcomes of successive shots. The result: nope, no correlation. No such thing as the hot hand. Then why do we believe the hot hand exists? Because we tend to perceive meaning, purpose, and principle in totally random patterns where there is by definition nothing involved but randomness. If like most people you guessed “B” because it looks more random, you’re wrong. The answer is that these sequences are equally likely to occur. A purely random sequence is not necessarily a sequence without clumps in it. This does not reflect any type of systematic causal influence like a “hot coin,” it is simply the way that probability works. Sorry, Bob Knight, time to give the hot hand the ol’ heave-ho.
An additional legendary sports phenomenon is named the “Sports Illustrated jinx.” Supposedly, the performance of players and groups who grace the cover of Sports Illustrated is henceforward jinxed or cursed. Batters stop hitting the ball. Team winning percentage levels off. Sprinters turn out to be slower. You get the idea. Gilovich also explored this phenomenon and, naturally, concluded that it can be explained in terms of very simple statistics.
The Sports Illustrated jinx can be explained by a phenomenon named statistical regression. The idea here is that any outcome is due partly to the effect of at least one causal independent variable, and partly to what’s called error, or chance. For our purposes let’s let talent represent the independent variable, and luck the error. Imagine you’re an athlete. In order to get on the cover of Sports Illustrated, you definitely have to have everything working for you. You have to be talented and lucky for a while, and when you finally do get that coveted cover, your talent and luck will probably be at or around their absolute peak. Now, how long can you expect these factors to hold up? If you’re fortunate, your talent will hold up for a while. And it makes sense that it would; athletic talent is usually a pretty stable quality in a human being. However, should you also expect your luck to last? Of course not, at least not for very long.
That, in fact, is statistical regression. Extreme scores or observations will finally go back to what you would mainly expect given what you know. While that skinny lead-off hitter homers in five straight sports, you ought to be expecting that performance to level off, given what you know on the player’s power and ability. He got fortunate for a while, then his fortune ran out. People do not become unlucky, or any less gifted after showing on the cover of Sports Illustrated. It’s easily that the fortune they needed to get themselves there in the first place finally ran out.
Anyone with experience playing sports knows that clutch players and hot hands exist. On the other hand, I also think this illusion of causation is from fans neglecting declines and injuries in the whole sports populace. Not so many people ever look at players out of the spotlight whose arguably good career has declined in the same way featured players’ have.
Copyright by Lucy who likes shopping online, going fishing, often searches manchester united jersey and fashion things on the Internet.
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