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Winning streaks in sports may be more than just magical thinking, several new studies suggest.
几个最新的研究显示，在体育世界中，连胜可能不仅是奇思异想。
Whether you call them winning streaks, "hot hands" or being "in the zone," most sports fans believe that players, and teams, tend to go on tears. Case in point: Nate Robinson's almost single-handed evisceration of the Miami Heat on Monday night. (Yes, I am a Bulls fan.)
不管你把它们叫作连胜，“手感发烫”还是“正在状态”，绝大多数体育爱好者都相信，球员与球队会继续将这种情况保持下去。举个例子：5月7日晚，内特·罗宾逊（Nate Robinson）几乎仅凭一己之力就将迈阿密热火碾压成渣（是的，我是公牛队的球迷）。
But our faith in hot hands is challenged by a rich and well-regarded body of science over the past 30 years, much of it focused on basketball, that tells us our belief is mostly fallacious. In one of the first and best-known of these studies, published in 1985, scientists parsed records from the Philadelphia 76ers, the Boston Celtics and the Cornell University varsity squad and concluded that players statistically were not more likely to hit a second basket after sinking a first. But players and fans believed that they were, so a player who had hit one shot would be likely to take the team's next, and teammates would feed this "hot" player the ball.
但我们对滚烫手感的信仰被过去30年间的诸多科学研究所质疑，它们资料丰富，收获了好评。其中，大多的关注点都在篮球上，最终的研究结果告诉我们，这种信念大多数时候是靠不住的。其中最早也是最著名的研究之一发表于1985年，科学家们用文本分析的方法研究了费城76人队、波士顿凯尔特人队以及康奈尔大学校队的记录，归纳出的结论是，在数据上，刚刚投进一球的球员们投入下一球的可能性并不会有所提高。但是球员和球迷们却相信这一点，所以一个刚投入一球的球员很可能会负责球队下一次进攻中的出手，他的队友也会把球喂给这位“手感发烫”的球员。
Other studies showed that fans supported and bet on teams that they thought were on a hot streak, even though these bets rarely paid off. Our belief in them revealed how strongly humans want to impose order and meaning on utterly random sequences of events.
其他研究显示，球迷会支持那些他们认为正处于连胜状态的球队，并且把赌注押在它们身上，即使这些赌注基本回不了本。我们的这一信念表明，面对完全随机的活动序列，人类是多么强烈地想要赋予它们以规律与意义。
Now, however, some new studies that use huge, previously unavailable data sets are suggesting that, in some instances, hands can ignite, and the success of one play can indeed affect the outcome of the next.
但是现在，某些使用了以前的科学家无法触及到的海量数据的新研究表明，在某些例子中，手感是可以燃烧发烫的，一次成功的进攻也确实可以影响到下一次进攻的成败。
In the most wide-ranging of the new studies, Gur Yaari, a computational biologist at Yale, and his colleagues gathered enormous amounts of data about an entire season's worth of free throw shooting in the N.B.A. and 50,000 games bowled in the Professional Bowlers Association. Subjecting these numbers to extensive (and, to the layperson, inscrutable) statistical analysis, they tried to determine whether the success or failure of a free throw or a bowling frame depended on what had just happened in the competitor's last attempt. In other words, if someone had just sunk a free throw or rolled a strike, was the person more likely to succeed immediately afterward? Or were the odds about the same as tossing a coin and seeing how it landed?
作为内容最为广泛的一项新研究，来自耶鲁大学的计算生物学家古尔·雅里(Gur Yaari)与他的同事收集到了NBA某个完整赛季的所有罚球数据以及5万场职业保龄球协会比赛的比赛数据。对这些数字进行深入的（对外行人来说则是高深莫测的）数据分析之后，他们试图推断出篮球比赛中一次罚球或者保龄球赛中一次投球的成功或失败是否会取决于参赛者上一次尝试的结果。用另一句话说，如果某个人刚刚投进了一次罚球，或打出了一次全中，这个人在紧接着的下一次投球中会更有可能成功吗？还是说，这其实与把一枚硬币扔到半空中，看它是如何着陆的是一个道理？
In these big sets of data, which were far larger than those used in, for instance, the 1985 basketball study, success did slightly increase the chances of subsequent success — though generally over a longer time frame than the next shot. Basketball players experienced statistically significant and recognizable hot periods over an entire game or two, during which they would hit more free throws than random chance would suggest. But they would not necessarily hit one free throw immediately after the last.
Similarly, bowlers who completed a high-scoring game were more likely to roll strikes in the next game. But a strike in one frame of each game was not statistically likely to lead to a strike in the next frame.
在这些与过去研究（比如说1985年的那个关于篮球的研究）相比数目庞大许多的数据中，成功的确会轻微地提高下一次继续成功的可能性——但是与紧接着的下一次尝试相比，这个规律更适用于较长的时间周期。篮球运动员会有一整场或者两场打出漂亮数据、手感滚烫的比赛，在其中他们的罚球命中率会比随机机率高。但他们在投中某一个罚球后，不见得会在马上进行的下一个罚球中也成功将球罚中。与之相似，在得分较高的一局比赛过后，保龄球手在接下来一局比赛中打出全中的可能性也更高。但是在每一局中，一次全中的投球并不一定会带来又一次全中。
Hot streaks have some relevance in volleyball as well, as a 2012 study helpfully titled "The Hot Hand Exists in Volleyball" explores. Researchers at the German Sport University in Cologne examined match results for 26 elite volleyball players and identified statistically meaningful scoring streaks among half of them. The researchers also found that when a players got hot, teammates and coaches responded almost immediately in ways that moved the ball to the streaking player, increasing the team's likelihood of winning.
就像2012年一个开宗明义的研究《滚烫手感存在于排球比赛》（ “The Hot Hand Exists in Volleyball" ）所指出的那样，连胜现象在排球中也存在相关性。德国科隆体育大学对26位顶尖排球运动员的比赛结果进行了分析，在其中半数的运动员身上发现了在统计学上具有意义的连胜现象。研究者们还发现，当一位运动员手感发热时，队友与教练都会立刻做出反应，把球交到这位状态正佳的球员手中，来提高球队取胜的可能性。
But if winning streaks have some rational basis, then by inference so would losing streaks, which makes the latest of the new studies, of basketball game play, particularly noteworthy. In that analysis, published last month in the journal Psychological Science, Yigal Attali, who holds a doctorate in cognitive psychology, scrutinized all available shooting statistics from the 2010-11 N.B.A. season.
但是如果连胜有了合理性的基础，那由此可以推出，连败也是真实存在的，这让针对篮球比赛的一个最新研究尤其值得一提。在4月份于《心理科学》期刊上发表的该研究中，认知心理学博士伊加尔·阿塔利（Yigal Attali）仔细分析了2010-2011赛季NBA所有可使用的投篮数据。
He found that a player who drained one shot was more likely than chance would suggest to take the team's next shot — and also more likely than chance would suggest to miss it.
他发现，一个刚刚成功抓住一次得分机会的球员会更可能继续在球队的下一次进攻中出手——然而也更有可能失手。
Essentially, he found that in real games, players developed anti-hot hands. A momentary success bred immediate subsequent failure.
从根本上来说，他发现在真实比赛中，球员发展出了“反滚烫”手感。紧随现下的成功而来的往往是失手。
The reason for this phenomenon might be both psychological and practical, Dr. Attali wrote; players seemed to take their second shots from farther out than their first ones, perhaps because they felt buoyed by that last success. They also were likely to be defended more vigorously after a successful shot, since defenders are as influenced by a belief in hot hands as anyone else.
阿塔利博士在论文中写道，这个现象出现的原因，可能有心理与实际两方面的因素。球员们在第二投的时候会在比第一投更远的地方出手，这有可能是因为他们受之前的那次成功所激励。在一次成功的投篮之后，防守者也倾向于给予这些人更大的关注，因为防守者也与其他人一样，由于相信滚烫手感的确存在而受到了影响。
But what the findings underscore, more subtly, is that patterns do exist within the results. The players were more likely to miss after a successful shot. And this anti-hot hand phenomenon, said Dr. Yaari, who is familiar with the study, was itself a pattern. "It is not completely random and independent" of past results, he said.
但是，这些发现所揭示的更为微妙的事，是这些结果中确实存在规律。球员们在成功的投篮之后很可能会投丢下一球。而据对此研究十分了解的雅里博士所说，这种反滚烫手感现象本身就是一种规律。他说，“它并不是完全随机以及独立”于之前的结果。
These new studies do not undermine the validity of the magisterial past research on hot hands, but expand and augment it, Dr. Yaari and the other authors say, adding even more human complexity. Yes, we probably imagine and desire patterns where they do not exist. But it may be that we also are capable of sensing and responding to some cues within games and activities that are almost too subtle for most collections of numbers to capture.
这些新研究并没有破坏过去那些关于火热手感的研究结果的权威性，而是将其扩充以及增强了，雅里博士与其他研究者表示，并注入了更多的人类复杂性。是的，在那些并不存在规律的领域，我们可能会想象并且渴望着规律。但我们也有能力感知到在某些竞赛与活动中暗藏的线索，并对其做出反应，而这些隐藏的规律其实是模糊到绝大多数的数据都无法捕捉的。
"I think that our minds evolved to be sensitive to these kinds of patterns," Dr. Yaari said, "since they occur frequently in nature."
“我觉得我们的头脑进化到了对这些规律很敏感的程度，”雅里博士说，“因为它们在自然界中经常发生。”
And that is enough encouragement for me to believe that, against all rational expectations, the Bulls will carry the series against Miami. They're hot.
即使所有的理性分析都得出与之相反的结论，以上这些已经足够鼓励我去相信，公牛队接下来会赢得对阵迈阿密的系列赛。他们现在手感正滚烫。
