Re: Man Bites Dog (825 Views)
Posted by:
TempletonPeck (IP Logged)
Date: May 14, 2018 01:16PM
After the race, we're all weak to hindsight bias, and to learn something meaningful, it's important to have/look at a big data set so that you aren't cherry-picking to support your ideas.
For example, if you look at the sheets of either horse you are discussing here, you may be able to say "Ah, sire X/trainer Y clearly has horses move forward first time slop in the Derby!" But, if you looked at 10,000 of each, I think you'd more likely find that isn't true. (Of course, we don't have 10,000 of anything to look at here, but we may as well look at as many as we have!)
Looking at individual performances may be a good enough place to come up with an idea, which you then use data to confirm or deny or support or what-have-you, but that's all it's really worth.
So, as I have previously suggested, if you want to look through the (free!) archives and say "Folks, I have done some digging, and I have an idea about horses that tend to move up in sloppy Derbies:" I think you would get an absolutely massive and constructive response. But, when you say "I think your time would be better spent figuring out why you didn't know these horses would move up, rather than worrying about your competitors," I think you should expect a response in kind.