On the first point, I think it is you that is being a little disingenuous here. Ragozin's "factual data" is a statistical analysis of the prior history of all horses that have ever run. The difference is that you give primary focus to the previous history of horses in only that particular race. It may be fair to say that Ragozin makes certain assumptions, but the making of a variant is not purely a judgment call. Ragozin's assumption is that the speed of a track stays more or less the same throughout a day (except in defined situations), and that certain types of races can be predicted based primarily on a large database of prior races. It is that assumption that you attack, but if you accept it, then variant making is not a pure judgment call. For you, it is a pure judgment call because you believe that track conditions are infinitely variable and the only way to tell what a horse ran is to predict what each particular field should have run and go from there. That is a judgment call. In fact, if you think about it, you have no variant at all. Each race is determined entirely independently of another.