Monday, March 24, 2008

A couple of brief items, one related to golf and the other to NBA basketball...

Tiger Woods had his streak of five straight PGA tournament wins (seven tourneys overall) snapped this morning, in the weather-delayed finish of the Doral tournament. For all the excitement surroundings Tiger's streak -- compounded last week by his dramatic 25-foot putt to win the Arnold Palmer Invitational -- I was feeling a little more reticent. I thought that Woods previously had compiled streaks as long as -- or longer than -- his recent one. Indeed, as shown here, Woods's current streak was not his best.

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Sunday night in L.A., the Lakers fell behind the Golden State Warriors by 26 points early in the second half, then came back to take the lead, and then let the game get away again. At the end, it was Golden State winning 115-111.

Regarding comeback situations, there's a major question I've pondered with people over the years. Specifically, why in some cases does the team coming from behind keep its rally going and pull away from the formerly leading team to win the game (i.e., a "momentum" scenario), whereas other times the surging team will make the game close (or even take a slight lead) and then fall back down again (i.e., a "regression to the mean" scenario)? The Laker-Warrior game, of course, was an example of the latter.

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