A few weeks ago, Sports Illustrated posted a video of Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry. He takes a shot at the basket from the far side. The ball hits the ground. I can think of a reason for that. He is a very good shooter. He took another shot and made it. Then again. Again. And four times.
Is it legit or not? Statistics and physics can be used to find out.
There is basic probability.
Physicists don't usually go into the most complex version of a problem. They do a rough estimation called a "back of the envelope" calculation.
You just need a coin to experiment at home. Will it land on the heads or tails? You have a chance of guessing right if you don't have psychic powers. It's best to think of this as a fraction of 1 and a chance of success with a value of 0.
Predicting the outcome of two coin flips in a row is something you want to do. You have a chance of 0.25 for the first flip and 0.25 for the second flip. There is a total probability of 0.25. There is a one in four chance of that happening. It makes sense because there are four possibilities.
Predicting five flips in a row would be something you would want to do. It would be 0.05. There is only a small chance that you will correctly predict all of the results.
Are you aware of where this is going? This can be applied to basketball. Imagine if Curry's skill was such that he could make a full-court shot. His chances of getting five in a row would be 3 out of 100. It's not bad. You could keep tossing balls until you got five in a row. It could take all day, but it should be doable.
If you assume a lower chance of success, it becomes worse. You can only hit 1 out of 20 full court throws. It would be 0.05 There is a chance of five in a row being sunk. I wish you good luck with that.
Do you think about this? Curry is taking five shots. He has a chance to make all five in a row. He would need 5 shots to get a hit probability of. It's much easier to make a free throw shot if the player is standing close to the hoop.
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