Re: Is it just me (581 Views)
Posted by:
TGJB (IP Logged)
Date: July 19, 2006 04:35PM
Tony-- you have to remember that what we will be measuring success here by is each horse's chance of WINNING (who has the winner ranked higher), not head to head. Thus, in a race where there are several horses with tops in the 5 to 7 range:
Horse A: 8,8,8.
Horse B: 20,5,5.
If you average all 3 races A will rank better. Do you really think he has as good (let alone better) a chance to WIN a race that figures to go 7 or better?
Michael-- if you were handicapping, obviously you would prefer the last 5. I would be very surprised if it would matter for a study like this.
What we are trying to do is strike a balance between top ability and consistency (the chance of running that top performance or a good one), in some mechanical way. If this were a betting program where we were going to bet real money, damn right we would tinker with it. But it's not-- it's a mechanical way of grinding down data over 600 races. The nature of this study is incremental-- nobody gets a big jump because of a $40 winner, there are 600 points to be distributed, one at a time. And the screwing of one side or the other that will come because of the mechanical nature should be roughly evenly distributed over the long run.