A player sinks his fourth shot in a row and the crowd goes wild, while commentators say what the crowd is thinking the magic phrase "he is on fire!" But is he? There is a significant body of literature related to the hot hand in sports. Some of the papers claim that they have found the effect, while the others try to disprove it.

This time we consider another generalization of the Sznajd model, which also includes four opinions. But now they are no longer one-dimensional! In this Authoritarian-conservative-libertarian-socialist (ACLS) Sznajd model opinions are two-dimensional. Namely, there are two binary dimensions: attitudes towards political and personal freedoms are considered at the same time [1].

Last time I have admitted that I have misread one well-known generalization of the Sznajd model. This time I would like to present you the original interpretation proposed by Stauffer in [1]. Though I would like to note that I was still unable to reproduce Stauffer's original result.

<...> Unfortunately, this cross-fertilisation did not really follow through, at least not on a large scale, in spite of the involvement of larger and larger cohorts of physicists in the development of what is now called "econophysics" and "sociophysics". Until recently, mainstream economists have essentially muddled through along the same well-trodden path, developing monetary policy tools based on the idea that agents are rational calculators with infinite foresight, who optimize their "utility function" assuming others will do the same. In 2003, Robert Lucas - one of the dons of Rational Expectations and Nobel Prize recipient in 1995 - claimed that "the central problem of depression prevention had been solved". We know all too well what happened in 2008. <...>

Or so writes J. P. Bouchaud in [1], which is one of the best recently written introductions to econophysics and sociophysics. We invite you to read it on arxiv (see reference for the link) or find it on Europhysics News.

References

• J. P. Bouchaud. Econophysics: Still fringe after 30 years? To appear in Europhysics News. arXiv:1901.03691 [physics.soc-ph].

Last time we have introduced you to the Sznajd model. We have also mentioned that this model was rather popular in Sociophysics around the beginning of the XXI century. This time I wanted to introduce you to one the modified Sznajd models, but I have misread the article [1]. Well, accidents happen in science from time to time...

Nevertheless the "misread" model also looks rather nice, so I have decided to still present it. Next time I'll introduce you to the original version of this "misread" model.