Hot Hand Fallacy
Hot Hand Phenomenon
The apparent phenomenon that a person who experiences a successful outcome with a random event has a greater probability of success in further attempts. Not necessarily a fallacy, as recent studies using modern statistical analysis show there is evidence for the "hot hand" in some sporting activities.
Origin
Described in the landmark 1985 paper "The hot hand in basketball: On the misperception of random sequences" by psychologists Thomas Gilovich, Robert Vallone, and Amos Tversky in Cognitive Psychology. They found basketball shooting sequences statistically indistinguishable from random coin flips, concluding the hot hand was a "cognitive illusion." However, statisticians Joshua Miller and Adam Sanjurjo later identified a subtle mathematical bias in the original analysis, and their 2018 correction found significant evidence of streak shooting, complicating the "fallacy" designation.