Hot Hand, Variance, and When to Believe a Pattern

What you'll build

• A simulation that shows how often streaks appear in pure randomness
• A test for whether a pattern in your data is real or just variance
• A reusable notebook for separating signal from noise in performance data

What you'll learn

• Why the human eye sees streaks that are not there
• How to quantify how much of a pattern could be luck
• The hot-hand debate and what the statistics actually say
• How to communicate uncertainty to people who want a clean answer

About Maddy

Mathematics PhD student at the University of Washington specializing in probability, and creator of @wnbadata sharing WNBA and women's basketball analytics.