An Investigation Into Probabilities of Streaks in Online Chess (Rosenthal 2025)

English Podcast Start at 00:00:00Bengali Podcast Start at 00:20:14Hindi Podcast Start at 00:30:46🎙️ Welcome to "Revise and Resubmit" — the podcast where deep dives into academic brilliance come with a twist of curiosity and a splash of flair! 🧠✨Today’s episode is like no other — we’re taking you on a journey that starts on the 64 squares of a digital chessboard and ends in the realm of cold, hard probability. ♟️💻📰 The headlines were buzzing. Allegations flew. Was one of the world’s most electrifying chess players, Hikaru Nakamura, riding the wave of genius—or was something fishy happening behind the scenes? 🕵️‍♂️🎯Well, hold onto your pawns, because Jeffrey S. Rosenthal, a name that commands respect in the world of statistics, is here to crunch the numbers and settle the score. His new paper, “An Investigation Into Probabilities of Streaks in Online Chess”, published in Harvard Data Science Review (Spring 2025, Issue 7.2), dives deep into the mathematics of streaks — not the scandalous kind, but the streaks that made even grandmasters raise their eyebrows. 🧮📈Using theoretical models and Monte Carlo simulations (no dice, just data!), Rosenthal breaks down what happens when you combine volume, rating gaps, and a touch of human brilliance. The result? Hikaru’s streaks, it turns out, are not suspicious. Just statistically… probable. 🤯♟️And here's the kicker: This groundbreaking research appears in the prestigious Harvard Data Science Review, a non-APC open-access journal published by none other than MIT Press. 🏆📘 That means no fees for authors, no paywalls for readers — just pure, accessible scholarship. Now that deserves a standing ovation! 👏👏Before we dive in, make sure you subscribe to 🎧 Revise and Resubmit on Spotify, Amazon Prime, and Apple Podcasts, and catch visual deep dives on our ✨YouTube channel: Weekend Researcher.✨ Your curiosity deserves it. 💡📱Now, here's the million-dollar question we're about to unpack:👉 Can a streak of brilliance look suspicious... simply because it’s rare? Or are we just not used to what true statistical expectation actually looks like?🎉 Special thanks to Jeffrey S. Rosenthal for this insightful piece, and to MIT Press for supporting open-access excellence through the Harvard Data Science Review.Let’s dig in. 🕳️🐇ReferenceRosenthal, J. S. (2025). An Investigation Into Probabilities of Streaks in Online Chess. Harvard Data Science Review, 7(2). https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.6939122dRosenthal, J. S. (2025, July 9). I’m a statistics professor who became embroiled in the world of online chess drama. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/im-a-statistics-professor-who-became-embroiled-in-the-world-of-online-chess-drama-256294‌Youtube Channel⁠https://www.youtube.com/@weekendresearcher⁠Support us on Patreonhttps://patreon.com/weekendresearcher