ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Hot hand fallacy

Ok kiddo, let me explain to you what's a hot hand fallacy.

Imagine you are playing basketball and you just made two shots in a row. Your friends might say you have a "hot hand", and that means you have a better chance of making your next shot because you are on a winning streak.

The hot hand fallacy is when people believe that streaks or patterns in events will continue in the future. In other words, they think that if you have a hot hand, you will keep making shots, just because you made a few in a row.

But that's not always true. Every shot you take is independent from each other. Making two shots in a row doesn't increase your chances of making your third shot. Your chances of making any shot are always the same, no matter what happened before.

It's like tossing a coin. Every time you flip it, the chances of getting heads or tails will always be 50/50. If you got heads twice in a row, it doesn't mean that your next toss will be tails, because the past doesn't affect the future.

So, the hot hand fallacy is when people think that past success means future success, even when there is no logical or statistical reason to support it.