Does it really happen, anyway? Maybe its just hit or miss. The Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1964 was a group called the Beatles. Good call. But the year before, the Best New Artist was Ward Swingle. First let's look at the case for there being such a thing as a sophomore jinx. With a quick look at the internet one can find plenty of examples that seem to support this idea.
Album sales by some pretty well known names:
Terence Trent D'arby - Album Number One - 12 million, Album Number Two - 2 million.
Spin Doctors - Album Number One - 5 million, Album Number Two - 1 million.
Christopher Cross - Album Number One - 5 million, Album Number Two - 500,000 thousand.
Hootie and the Blowfish - Album Number One - 16 million, Album Number Two - 3 million.
You get the idea. Aaron Gleeman in an article titled The Sophomore Slump looked at all of the Rookie of the Year award winners, comparing their first and second seasons by using a baseball statistic called win shares. He found that 73 of the winners got worse in season two, while only 37 improved. Four stayed the same.
Rick Sutcliffe was the National League Rookie of the Year in 1979. Overall, he had a fine career, winning 179 games. His first year he won 17 games and lost 10. He gave up about three and a half runs a game. Next year he won 3 and lost 9 and gave up about five and a half runs a game.This so-called sophomore jinx, can be explained at least in part statistically with the concept of the regression to the mean. The dictionary says, "In statistics, regression toward (or to) the mean is the phenomenon that if a variable is extreme on its first measurement, it will tend to be closer to the average on its second measurement.
If we flip a coin 100 times and get 63 heads, would we do better next time? Yes, maybe. But probably not. But if we got 40 heads on a first try, chances are, next time we'll see an increase. In either case we go back toward or regress toward the mean.
The examples we have seen have something in common. All of these first years were very good. They got our attention. People are wondering what they'll do for a follow up. All of these burst upon the scene with a great debut. Perhaps they were far above what their usual production would be. That can happen, but chances are in any given effort, we will do what our historical average would suggest.
Are there cases where the sophomore slump doesn't happen? Consider the baseball player that has a first year that is a bit below what he is capable of. Likely, he will improve the next year. The public really didn't notice his first year because it was nothing spectacular. We we're all paying attention to the Rookie of the Year winners.
