Is Basketball a Random Walk?
About two years ago, I attended a seminar given by Dr. Sid Redner of the Santa Fe Institute titled, “Is Basketball Scoring a Random Walk?” I was certainly skeptical that such an exciting game shared similarities with coin flipping, but, nevertheless, Dr. Redner went on to convince me–and surely many other audience members–that basketball does indeed exhibit behavior akin to a random walk. At the very end of his lecture, Dr. Redner said something along the lines of, “the obvious betting applications are left as an exercise to the audience.” So, as enthusiastic audience members, let’s try to tackle this exercise. ...