How regression to the mean explains many strange sporting results.
How our brains are built to want to see patterns and will see them when they are just not there.
As we’ll see, the human mind is built to identify for each event a definite cause and can therefore have a hard time accepting the influence of unrelated or random factors. And so the first step is to realize that success or failure sometimes arises neither from great skill nor from great incompetence but from, as the economist Armen Alchian wrote, “fortuitous circumstances.”Read more at location 150
the creation of a great novel—or piece of jewelry or chocolate-chip cookie—and the presence of huge stacks of that novel—or jewelry or bags of cookies—at the front of thousands of retail outlets. That’s why successful people in every field are almost universally members of a certain set—the set of people who don’t give up.Read more at location 290
Such issues are not discussed in corporate boardrooms, in Hollywood, or elsewhere, and so the typical patterns of randomness—apparent hot or cold streaks or the bunching of data into clusters—are routinely misinterpreted and, worse, acted on as if they represented a new trend.Read more at location 350
When we look at extraordinary accomplishments in sports—or elsewhere—we should keep in mind that extraordinary events can happen without extraordinary causes. Random events often look like nonrandom events, and in interpreting human affairs we must take care not to confuse the two.Read more at location 461
ing. Psychologists call that type of mistake the availability bias because in reconstructing the past, we give unwarranted importance to memories that are most vivid and hence most available for retrieval.Read more at location 596
Here’s another crazy game. Suppose the state of California made its citizens the following offer: Of all those who pay the dollar or two to enter, most will receive nothing, one person will receive a fortune, and one person will be put to death in a violent manner. Would anyone enroll in that game? People do, and with enthusiasm. It is called the state lottery. And although the state does not advertise it in the manner in which I have described it, that is the way it works in practice.Read more at location 1405
He even measured the life spans of sovereigns and clergymen, which, being similar to the life spans of people in other professions, led him to conclude that prayer brought no benefit.Read more at location 2755
Galton soon realized that processes that did not exhibit regression toward the mean would eventually go out of control.Read more at location 2782
But as we’re about to see, though in random variation there are orderly patterns, patterns are not always meaningful. And as important as it is to recognize the meaning when it is there, it is equally important not to extract meaning when it is not there. Avoiding the illusion of meaning in random patterns is a difficult task.Read more at location 2884
For a streaky player, the chance of a success on the heels of a prior success should be higher than his or her overall chance of success. But the authors found that for each player a success following a success was just as likely as a success following a failure (that is, a missed basket).Read more at location 3061
The psychologist Bruno Bettelheim observed, for instance, that survival in Nazi concentration camps “depended on one’s ability to arrange to preserve some areas of independent action, to keep control of some important aspects of one’s life despite an environment that seemed overwhelming.”Read more at location 3168
One manifestation of that illusion occurs when an organization experiences a period of improvement or failure and then readily attributes it not to the myriad of circumstances constituting the state of the organization as a whole and to luck but to the person at the top.Read more at location 3217
When we are in the grasp of an illusion – or, for that matter, whenever we have a new idea – instead of searching for ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct. Psychologists call this the confirmation bias,Read more at location 3241
Rather than convincing anyone, the data polarized the group. Thus even random patterns can be interpreted as compelling evidence if they relate to our preconceived notions.Read more at location 3263
When we look back in detail on the major events of our lives, it is not uncommon to be able to identify such seemingly inconsequential random events that led to big changes.Read more at location 3320
As a result, although statistical regularities can be found in social data, the future of particular individuals is impossible to predict, and for our particular achievements, our jobs, our friends, our finances, we all owe more to chance than many people realize.Read more at location 3331
It is easy to concoct stories explaining the past or to become confident about dubious scenarios for the future. That there are traps in such endeavors doesn’t mean we should not undertake them. But we can work to immunize ourselves against our errors of intuition. We can learn to view both explanations and prophecies with skepticism. We can focus on the ability to react to events rather than relying on the ability to predict them, on qualities like flexibility, confidence, courage, and perseverance. And we can place more importance on our direct impressions of people than on their well-trumpeted past accomplishments. In these ways we can resist forming judgments in our automatic deterministic framework.Read more at location 3443
We miss the effects of randomness in life because when we assess the world, we tend to see what we expect to see. We in effect define degree of talent by degree of success and then reinforce our feelings of causality by noting the correlation. That’s why although there is sometimes little difference in ability between a wildly successful person and one who is not as successful, there is usually a big difference in how they are viewed.Read more at location 3610
The cord that tethers ability to success is both loose and elastic. It is easy to see fine qualities in successful books or to see unpublished manuscripts, inexpensive vodkas, or people struggling in any field as somehow lacking. It is easy to believe that ideas that worked were good ideas, that plans that succeeded were well designed, and that ideas and plans that did not were ill conceived. And it is easy to make heroes out of the most successful and to glance with disdain at the least. But ability does not guarantee achievement, nor is achievement proportional to ability. And so it is important to always keep in mind the other term in the equation – the role of chance.Read more at location 3685
What I’ve learned, above all, is to keep marching forward because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized. For even a coin weighted toward failure will sometimes land on success. Or as the IBM pioneer Thomas Watson said, “If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.”Read more at location 3696
