On Demand
Seeking Patterns
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.
Wolfram Schultz and Roland Suri's Study on Dopamine in Monkeys
Jonah Lehrer's Article on Ann Klinestiver
The Great Maurice Cheeks in his heyday
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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.
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