Reading three games as a trend

Three results sit entirely inside the noise of every sport on this board. The sample cannot distinguish a real change in a team from an ordinary run by a team that has not changed at all.

Short sequences of independent events cluster. An exactly average team wins three in a row about one time in eight, so across a league of thirty teams several are on a three-game streak at any moment, permanently, with no cause.

Real changes do exist — an injury, a coaching change, a tactical shift — and they announce themselves through a mechanism rather than through a scoreline. The mechanism is what makes them worth acting on.

Here is the catch. Almost all sports coverage is built on stretches this short, because they are what happened recently and what people remember. That constant repetition is why three games feel like information.

What to do with it. Before acting on a streak, name the mechanism that changed. If there is no mechanism, there is no trend — there is a run.