But just because earnest attempts at critical thinking are regularly made on these sports shows, that doesn't mean that they are successful attempts. Another reason I like these shows 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 believe everyone's heard of is called the "hot hand" in basketball. Supposedly, when players get the hot hand, they have found 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 likely to occur following a previously made shot than following a missed shot, and vice-versa (a missed shot is more likely to occur following a previously missed shot than following a made shot).

Just to annoy everyone, Tom Gilovich and colleagues (1985) examined archival shooting records from the Philadelphia 76ers, Boston Celtics (free throws), and Cornell Varsity men's and women's teams to see whether this phenomenon is for real. They looked specifically at whether there was a correlation between the outcomes of successive shots (made, made; miss, miss = hot hand; made, miss; miss, made = no hot hand). The result: nope, no correlation. No such thing as the hot hand. Then why do we think 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. Which sequence of coin tosses would you say is more likely to occur purely by chance: HHHHHTTTTT or HHTHTTTTHT? If like most people you guessed "B" because it looks more random, you're wrong. (Have your head examined if you guessed "A.") 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 sort 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.

Another mythical sports phenomenon is called the "Sports Illustrated jinx." Supposedly, the performance of players and teams who grace the cover of Sports Illustrated is henceforward jinxed or cursed. Batters stop hitting the ball. Team winning percentage levels off. Sprinters become slower. You get the idea. Gilovich also explored this phenomenon and, naturally, concluded that it can be explained in terms of very simple statistics. (Don't worry, I'll never hit you with hard statistics.)

The Sports Illustrated jinx can be explained by a phenomenon called statistical regression. The idea here is that any outcome is due partly to the influence 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. But, should you also expect your luck to last? Of course not, at least not for very long. When does luck ever hold out for very long?

That, in essence, is statistical regression. Extreme scores or observations will eventually return to what you would basically expect given what you know. When that skinny lead-off hitter homers in five straight games, you should expect that performance to level off, given what you know about the player's strength and skill. He got lucky for a while, then his luck ran out. People do not become jinxed, or any less talented after appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated. It's simply that the luck they needed to get themselves there in the first place eventually ran out.

If you like this stuff, I strongly recommend reading Tom Gilovich's "How We Know What Isn't So."

  Ted Cascio is co-editor of House & Psychology (John Wiley & Sons).

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