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arXiv · 1803.05673

The Hot Hand in Professional Darts

Marius Ötting·Roland Langrock·Christian Deutscher·Vianey Leos-Barajas
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Abstract

We investigate the hot hand hypothesis in professional darts in a near-ideal setting with minimal to no interaction between players. Considering almost one year of tournament data, corresponding to 167,492 dart throws in total, we use state-space models to investigate serial dependence in throwing performance. In our models, a latent state process serves as a proxy for a player's underlying ability, and we use autoregressive processes to model how this process evolves over time. We find a strong but short-lived serial dependence in the latent state process, thus providing evidence for the existence of the hot hand.

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Marius Ötting, Roland Langrock, Christian Deutscher, Vianey Leos-Barajas. 2018-08-06. The Hot Hand in Professional Darts. https://doi.org/10.1111/rssa.12527

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