The studies in question asked: Given a successful shot N, does the probability of success for shot (N+1) increase, decrease, or stay the same?

The answer is "stays the same" in any sufficiently large sample set. This isn't in the realm of opinion-- it's a simple observation of real data. (That paper has since been expanded to larger studies in multiple sports, as I mention above.)

"I can't speak about baseball, but in basketball hitting streaks exists. I don't know exactly what your professor or the sad-ass intern studied, but I believe they mistaken because they simply can't estimate all factors (nobody can). And very likely they replaced a reason with a consequence."

The professor who did the initial basketball study in question (Amos Tversky) would have shared Kahneman's Nobel for Economics in 2002 for exactly this type of work had he not died beforehand. (A pretty good summary of the study, cribbed from the Boston Globe, is here.) The full study is here: Gilovich, T.; Vallone, R.; Tversky, A. (1985) "The Hot Hand in Basketball: On the Misperception of Random Sequences. Cognitive Psychology, 17, pp. 295–314. Kahneman got the Nobel precisely for showing how otherwise intelligent people perceive randomness in a highly irrational manner.

The good news is that if you can prove they're mistaken, you can probably get a cover article in a nice economics journal. It's not every day you get to shoot down a Nobelist in his primary field!

"Also, when a player and his team feels that he is "hot handed" in a certain game he takes more chances. Trying hard shots, leads the game, etc. Under "normal" circumstances he wouldn't even try to throw from the center but being "hot handed" he may try. Keep in mind, that 1 basket out of 2 is easier than 10 out of 20 because defenders (as you also noticed) will pay additional attention to you and, in general, it is harder to create 20 shot-attempt situations for yourself than just two. In practice, that means you will take more risks and shoot from not-so-good-positions more often."

Another interesting theory shot down by inelegant facts.

Some good books in related fields, if anyone's interested:
Prisoner's Dilemma, William Poundstone.
Full House, Stephen Jay Gould.
The Strategy of Conflict, Thomas C. Schelling.

Gould's the best pure author IMO, but the other books are more strictly about game theory. Poundstone's the more accessible of the two-- he's writing for a layman browsing the bookstore, whereas Schelling's book is basically an intro-level college textbook.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com