Fine. Randomness may govern the world around us, but does it guide US?? Jonah Lehrer joins us to examine one of the most skilled basketball teams ever, the '82 - '83 '76ers, and wonders whether or not the mythical "hot hand" actually exists.
Then we meet Ann Klinestiver of West Virginia, an English teacher who was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1991. When she began to take a drug to treat her disease, her life changed completely after one fateful day at the casino. Jonah discusses the neurotransmitter dopamine and the work of Wolfram Schultz, whose experiments with monkeys in the 1970s shed light on Ann's strange addiction and the deep desire for patterns inside us all.
Perhaps the killer had made his mind that he would shoot anyone who looked.
Please bring "In the Dark" to the Washington, DC metro area !! We could SO SO use a break in ...
Look at the reflection on the glass. In the computer generated photos, the reflections are just too perfect. Look at ...
This is one of the most uplifting and heartfelt stories I have ever heard, it just proves that people stick ...
Comments [4]
I still think that the idea of streaks being something that doesn't happen is incorrect. Were the statisticians trying to say that a basketball player will have the same shooting percentage every year of their career? And that every game they play will fall into that same percentage. Because I know for a fact that isn't true. I've seen guys shoot 2 for 10 one night and then 9 for 10 then next? Tennis players will have a their percentages go down as they age usually, and will still have the off night or the on night. I just don't buy it at all, unless I am misunderstanding what was being said.
Robert misspoke. (Sorry!) Schultz was not measuring actual dopamine release, he was only measuring the activity of dopamine neurons. It's difficult to connect an action potential with actual neurotransmitter release. That is the main problem with all of his studies (and all electrophysiology), they tell you nothing about actual release, nor where that release is taking place (dorsal striatum vs ventral striatum vs PFC).
On Jonah Lehrer's comment about Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak being the only outlier in sports. There has been a paper published to show that this isn't the case. Samuel Arbesman and Steven H. Strogatz (who I think contributes to some other episodes) published a paper after simulating ten thousand 100 year histories of baseball and found that a streak of that nature is likely to have occured, but not likely to have been preformed by Joe. Here is a link.
http://arxiv1.library.cornell.edu/vc/arxiv/papers/0807/0807.5082v1.pdf
Regarding basketball players and streaks, your statistician was not entirely correct.
To paraphrase, he was saying that streaks will occur even if the probability stays constant over time. I agree with that. But that does NOT prove that the probability stays constant. Streaks will also occur if the probability fluctuates - so will apparent "randomness.
To put it another way - the basketball player's state at any given time influenced by all previous states. Also, the environment is different at each moment in time. What are the odds that is probability of making a given shot are exactly the same as every previous shot? That seems pretty unlikely to me.
Leave a Comment
Register for your own account so you can vote on comments, save your favorites, and more. Learn more.
Please stay on topic, be civil, and be brief.
Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. Names are displayed with all comments. We reserve the right to edit any comments posted on this site. Please read the Comment Guidelines before posting. By leaving a comment, you agree to New York Public Radio's Privacy Policy and Terms Of Use.