In sports and in gambling there is a mistaken belief that a
player who is performing better than normal will continue to
play well, even if the odds suggest otherwise. This belief is
especially strong in basketball. Players who have made several
shots in a row are considered to have a “hot hand” and
encouraged to continue to shoot – even to attempt very difficult
baskets they normally cannot make. A variety of scientific
experiments have documented the fallacy of the hot hand in
basketball. A player may make many shots in a row in the short
term but his performance will eventually return to his long-term
average. The law of statistics is not suspended. Similarly, when
gamblers are on winning streaks, they keep betting or even
increase their wagers to take advantage of their good luck. Like
in basketball, gamblers ignore statistics and mistakenly believe
they are more likely to win a future bet because they have won
previous ones. Ignoring statistics while gambling is referred to
as the Monte Carlo fallacy. Th