How likely are the world records we hold dear? Should they have happened? Should they been set by the people who did them? There’s an New York Times Opinion piece written by some researchers who examined Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak to determine how likely it was to happen again. Turns out it’s very likely.
In the 10, 000 simulations the researchers ran on the entire history of baseball:
More than half the time, or in 5,295 baseball universes, the record for the longest hitting streak exceeded 53 games. Two-thirds of the time, the best streak was between 50 and 64 games.
In other words, streaks of 56 games or longer are not at all an unusual occurrence. Forty-two percent of the simulated baseball histories have a streak of DiMaggio’s length or longer. You shouldn’t be too surprised that someone, at some time in the history of the game, accomplished what DiMaggio did.
The real surprise is when the record was set. Our analysis reveals that 1941 was one of the least likely seasons for such an epic streak to occur.
In the rest of the article they discuss the other people more likely (based on the simulations) to have made the streak.