The tendency to attribute meaning to phenomena governed only by chance is ubiquitous. A good example is provided by regression to the mean, the tendency for an extreme value of a random quantity whose values cluster around an average to be followed by a value closer to the average or mean. Very intelligent people can be expected to have intelligent offspring, but in general the offspring will not be as intelligent as the parents. A similar tendency toward the average or mean holds for the children of very short parents, who are likely to be short, but not as short as their parents. If I throw twenty darts at a larget and manage to hit the bull's-eye eighteen times, the next time I throw twenty darts, I probably won't do as well.↵
This phenomenon leads to nonsense when people attribute the regression to the mean as due to some particular scientific law, rather than to the natural behavior of any random quantity. If a beginning pilot makes a very good landing. it's likely that his next one will not be as impressive. Likewise, if his landing is very bumpy, then, by chance alone, his next one will likely be better. Psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman studied one such situation in which, after good landings, pilots were praised, whereas after bumpy landings, they were berated. The flight instructors mistakenly attributed the pilots' deterioration to their praise of them, and likewise the pilots' improvement to their criticism: both, however, were simply regressions to the more likely mean performance. Because this dynamic is quite general. Tversky and Kahneman write, behavior is most likely to improve after punishment and to deteriorate after reward. Consequently, the human condition is such that ... one is most often rewarded for punishing others, and most often punished for rewarding them. It's not necessarily the human condition, I would hope, but a remediable innumeracy!) which results in this unfortunate tendency.↵
The sequel to a great movie is usually not as good as the original. The reason may not be the greed of the movie industry in cashing in on the first film's popularity, but simply another instance of regression to the mean. A great season by a baseball player in his prime will likely be followed by a less impressive season. The same can be said of the novel after the best-seller, the album that follows the gold record, or the proverbial sophomore jinx. Regression to the mean is a widespread phenomenon, with instances just about everywhere you look.