Jerry,

While the topic of baby race figures has been brought up, I have been wondering about something for a long time.

I've read the famous reply to David Patent where you spoke of the "projection method" of figure making. It was probably one of the better posts that I have read on this board and I understand where you are coming from when you chose not to assign a figure to a horse for a particular race.

What I can't understand is why a handicapper cannot collect data over a reasonably long period of time to get a representative sample of the performance of 2 yr olds over the same course and distance to get an idea of what may constitute a good performance today and what may not.

It may not be science so to speak, but it would be a step in the right direction. You and others may already do this, but I get the impression that most figure makers like to tie to other benchmarks.

Your work is on the cutting edge in so many areas. My question is...Can the data be tightened in these 2 yo races races by
not attaching to historic benchmarks such as those of older claiming horses, etc.?