My Texas team has scored 44 points in four consecutive games.  Aside from the obvious embarrassment of scoring 44 points in any one contest, let alone four in a freaking row, what is the probability that any team could score the same number of points that many games in a row in a simulation environment? 

I'd imagine given the massive number of HD variables, it would probably be more unlikely than, say, hitting the Powerball with a single ticket, no? 

(The most recent of those four games ended in a foul on the floor with zero seconds on the clock, which is ridiculous in its own right, but I digress.)

Doesn't sound quite that unlikely to me. You played slowdown all 4 games, and your opponents did as well in 3 games. So here's a quick-and-dirty estimation. You would expect your scoring to be between, say, 40 and 55 points *most* of the time in that situation. If you had a 1-in-15 chance of hitting 44 exactly on any given night (and a normal distribution might actually make it more likely), your chances of hitting it 4 times in a row are about 1-in-50,000. Add in your chances of hitting 43 four times in a row, same for 45, etc... and you're in the ballpark of a 1-in-5000 chance that you get the same output 4 games in a row with some number.

If you and your opponents had both played uptempo, your range of scores gets a lot wider, so the odds of 4-in-a-row get a lot slimmer.

i play sports.  i hate math.

Your Texas team has scored as many as 76 and as few as 44.  Allowing for a little variation up and down you have about a 40 point spread.

I think you have about a 1 in 6,400 chance of scoring the same number of points in 4 straight games (40*40*40).

40x40x40 is 64,000, not 6,400.  and that's only 3 games.  multiply by another 40, it's 2.5 million

Yeah, 64,000...oops!

You only need to multiply by 40 three times, the first time it all ready happened so it P=1.

The probability of getting any score (within the 40 possible) four times in a row is 1 in 64000.

The probability of getting "44" four times in a row (before it happens the first time) is the 1 in 2.56 millionish.

Posted by Trentonjoe on 5/19/2012 9:16:00 PM (view original):
Yeah, 64,000...oops!

You only need to multiply by 40 three times, the first time it all ready happened so it P=1.

The probability of getting any score (within the 40 possible) four times in a row is 1 in 64000.

The probability of getting "44" four times in a row (before it happens the first time) is the 1 in 2.56 millionish.

indeed.

Of course all of that is assuming a flat distribution.  Any kind of normal curve would dramatically decrease the probability of scoring the far low end of the distribution 4 times in a row.