When it comes to sports, stats unsatisfying

Does the preceding paragraph break your heart? It nearly broke mine last week when I came across it in the textbook for my class on judgment, decision-making and well-being. Embedded in a section titled “Misconception of Chance,” the paragraph was Max Bazerman and Don Moore’s almost triumphant proclamation of the fallacy of the hot hand. Essentially equating the phenomenon to a cognitive illusion, the authors followed the same logic to strip down sports streaks to nothing more than the product of skill-determined probability and the guiding hand of Lady Luck.

While I can accept the statistical explanations behind certain chance events — flipping a coin that only lands on heads, birthing five children who are all female — I draw the line with sports.

Wilt Chamberlain’s seven consecutive games of scoring 50 or more points, Tiger Woods’ four straight major professional golf titles and, the granddaddy of them all that blows any other contender out of the water, Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak cannot all possibly be attributed to statistics and luck alone. To do so would eliminate the various psychological, emotional and physical factors that went into the creation of these defining moments in sporting history. Don’t mental focus, desire and adrenaline count for anything?

What is perhaps more upsetting to me is that certain single-game out-of-this-world performances, such as former Pittsburgh Penguin Mario Lemieux’s five goals, five ways in 1988 (YouTube it, seriously), would have to be written off as well according to the overly rational, rather repugnant theory that the hot hand doesn’t exist.

After dwelling on the aforementioned paragraph for a few moments, instances refuting the authors’ claims that hit close to home immediately came to mind. Let’s take an example from this year’s Ivy League Championship women’s soccer team.

Senior midfielder Sarah Peteraf’s late-game heroics-turned-habit made her entire season worthy of being labeled a hot streak. Peteraf, who earned only sporadic playing time during her first three seasons with the Tigers, scored seven game-winning goals this year, quite a few of which came in the crucial closing moments of a match or in overtime.

Now, despite how impressive Peteraf’s senior season was, perhaps her performances could be dismissed as nothing more than a combination of probability and luck when examined over the course of 17 games or even her entire career. Because of her uncanny knack for finding the back of the net, Peteraf’s probability of scoring a goal in each game or conditional probability of scoring goals in consecutive games most likely trumped those of her teammates. A combination of this skill and fortune allowing her to be in the right place at the right time on so many occasions very may well have allowed the streak to happen.

On the whole, when researchers examine individual performances across large sample sizes over long stretches of time, as would most likely be the case with Peteraf, perhaps statistics can be used to explain away hot streaks, dismissing them as aberrations. I’m willing to concede some ground to this argument.

However, when it comes to incredible single-game performances, I remain unconvinced by the notion that the hot hand doesn’t exist.

In the men’s water polo team’s title match of the Southern Championship in early November, junior utility Eric Vreeland scored three goals to lead the Tigers to a 12-11 victory over Navy, traditionally one of the toughest teams in the sport.

As if Vreeland’s three tallies aren’t impressive enough, his final goal — the game-winner, for that matter — came off a shot called a spin-lob, a feat junior utility Mark Zalewski identified as “actually absurd.” The nearly impossible goal, which Vreeland had only ever attempted in practice, sealed the improbable win and title for Princeton with one minute, 29 seconds remaining in the game. I’d like to see a statistician calculate the exact probability of Vreeland capitalizing on that shot in that moment of that game using only his level of skill and then attribute the rest to luck.

Last spring, sophomore attack Jack McBride of the men’s lacrosse team put on one of the best performances the Class of 1952 Stadium has ever witnessed. McBride converted six goals on six shots en route to Princeton thoroughly embarrassing Penn and ultimately defeating the Quakers 14-5. Adrenaline pumping through his veins and shouts of encouragement emanating from the sidelines and stands echoing in his ears, McBride must have experienced a surge of confidence with each goal, and Penn goalie Chris Casey’s self-esteem most likely plummeted correspondingly. With McBride’s performance in mind, I have to swallow the assertion that the hot hand doesn’t exist? Please.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

While I understand the motivation of academics to demystify certain aspects of human intuition and their faith in the steadfastness of statistics, I refuse to concede the most beautiful, most awe-inspiring, most jaw-dropping feats of sport to numbers alone. If this means that I’m wrong by empirical standards, then I suppose I’m wrong. But I’ll trade probability and luck for myth and legend any day.