Barry Ritholtz, Columnist

Hot Hands, Winning Streaks and Perception

More fodder for sports geeks and numbers mavens to chew on.

March 30, 2020 at 3:12 PM UTC

Barry Ritholtz is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management, and was previously chief market strategist at Maxim Group. He is the author of “Bailout Nation.”

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Are winning streaks real? Does the hot hand really exist or is it just our pattern recognition software run amok? How has our thinking about the statistics behind lucky runs evolved over time? Those were the questions when we spoke with this week's guest on Masters in Business, Ben Cohen, who covers the National Basketball Association for the Wall Street Journal. His new book, "The Hot Hand: The Mystery and Science of Streaks," addresses these issues and more.