Gambler's Fallacy Paper

The biggest topic of this podcast was the gambler’s fallacy which is the notion that random events alternate. An example is a coin toss to decide. This is used to decide many things to include who gets the ball first during a National Football League game. Coin tosses gives the illusion that there is a fifty-fifty chance of landing on either heads or tails because there are only two sides to the coin when in fact, the coin could land on heads more times than tails, and vice versa.
Toby Moskowitz, an economist at Yale, and some colleagues broke down the gambler’s fallacy using three professions that rely on decision-making. Starting with Major League Baseball, the umpires must make decisions on whether to call a “ball” or a “strike” when the pitch is not straight through the strike zone. According to Moskowitz and his colleagues’ analysis, 127 umpires only got sixty four percent of 1.5 million calls right that were not obvious balls or strikes. Their research showed that if a strike was called before the same type of pitch,

the next call would be less likely called a strike. With a 36 percent error rate, umpires are fallible.
Moskowitz also explored the fallacy of loan officers in India who got the decision wrong eight percent of the time.

But, closer to home, in the United States, immigration courts have asylum judges who decide if to grant asylum. Data compiled by Moskowitz and his co-authors that span from 1985 to 2013 noted that New York had three immigration judges that granted asylum for eight out of ten cases while two judges granted asylum for one out of ten. After completing their analysis, they found that if a judge granted asylum for a case, the following case would be less likely granted. If the judge granted two cases, the chances for the third case is decreased by two. Also, if the two cases were granted asylum in the same day, the cases following is five percent less likely to be approved. The time of day and which order your case is reviewed may be the deciding factor on if you are approved or not approved and not necessarily the specifics of the

case.
This research is done based on evaluating how fallible humans are so there could be room for error in the research. Moskowitz and his co-authors lead those who are familiar with the podcast to believe that the gambler’s fallacy is a major part of decision-making. Stephen Dubner, the host, raised the question of the possibility of error in Moskowitz’s analysis in that the gambler’s fallacy is in fact a part of decision making for these professionals. Could it be situational? Could the circumstances surrounding the decisions be the deciding factors? It is safe to say that it does not matter if you are one of the world’s best umpires for Major League Baseball, a loan officer in India, or an asylum judge, gambler’s fallacy plays a part in the decision-making process.