An international team of researchers has conducted a statistical analysis of hot streaks to learn more about this mysterious facet of human nature. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes how they conducted their study and what they found.

A hot streak is a commonly used term to describe a series of successful ventures—for example, winning hand after hand in poker, making multiple three-point shots in a basketball game, or winning several games in a row. It is generally tied to human achievement and is steeped in folklore—particularly in sports and gambling. But is it a real thing? And if so, are there characteristics involved with it that could help explain how and why they occur?

To learn more about hot streaks in general, the researchers studied them as they occurred in three fields with measurable data: artistry, filmmaking and scientific research. Artistic hot streaks, they figured, could be measured by sales price and volume. Filmmaking hot streaks could be measured using box office tallies—and scientific hot streaks could be measured by looking at citation numbers. The researchers obtained data from art auctions, the IMDb database and research paper databases, respectively.

After applying a number of statistical techniques to their data, the researchers came away with several conclusions. The first is that the hot streak does appear to be a real phenomenon. And it happened to most of those individuals they studied—91 percent of artists who sold their work at auctions, for example, experienced a hot streak. The same was true for 92 percent of movie directors and 90 percent of research scientists. But they also found that it was rare for people in any of the three fields to experience more than one hot streak. They also found that the span of time for hot streaks across the three fields was relatively similar—5.7 years on average for artists, 5.2 for directors and 3.7 for research scientists.

Interestingly, the researchers found that having a hot streak did not seem to be tied to productivity—very few of those studied produced any more than they did during times when they were not experiencing a hot streak. Also, hot streaks could occur at almost any time during a person's career. The researchers note also that they could find no measurable data that might help explain why hot streaks occurred.

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