You might expect NBA players to know when and where to take their shots. They get paid millions of dollars a year to work out, avoid hitting their heads on door frames, and put the ball in the basket. Yet even years of training can't overcome a basic human superstition about our own behaviors: We believe that whatever just happened is about to happen again. If we stopped trusting in streakiness, we might all score more points.
Tal Neiman and Yonatan Lowenstein, researchers in Israel with a mysterious interest in professional American basketball, scrutinized play-by-play accounts of games from the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons. Their analysis included 291 NBA players and 41 WNBA players (indicating a good grasp of Americans' proportional interest in women's sports).
Specifically, the researchers were interested in decisions players make after hitting, or missing, a 3-point shot. After a successful 3-pointer, what are the odds that ...
