Having had a deluge of e-mail’s resulting from my post ‘Taking
things to the next level’, some offering advice, which I thank you for and
please don’t be offended if I take a different direction. Others asking me to
post my ‘sectional times’ on the blog, along with a whole host of other
questions. I hope this post will answer most questions (even those I
didn't fully understand) and lay out my intentions.
“The obvious criticism is
that the statistician's belief is subjective, and may vary from statistician to
statistician. Moreover, it affects the results. Frequentists maintain that
their results are based solely on the data, and therefore frequentist inference
is more objective than Bayesian inference.”
Firstly my intention is not to record a sectional time for
each individual horse at each furlong pole. As admirable as I find the work of
those that carry out such a task, it would be meaningless to fulfil my
objectives. I also believe this level of data in Horse Racing on our shores
where horses are intentionally held up behind a front runner and in most cases
look to do no more than follow the pace, whatever that pace may be, for the
vast majority of the trip to be largely irrelevant (sorry if I offend anyone).
My intention is record the time of the last 2 furlongs and
deduct that from the overall winning race time. This will result in two sets of
figures: One giving me the earlier pace: One giving the finish speed. For
horses beaten, time is added in accordance to the BHA
LPS.
At the present time there would be no mileage in publishing
the figures on the blog. Until I arrive at standards for trip and track (which will be when I have enough data for the figures to remain static as each
meeting is added) so we are able to correlate data between tracks using
past races from 2008 to the present (with the exception of Wolverhampton'S NEW Tapeta surface).
As straight forward as the task may seem on face value,
having spent the time outside of recording times for the last 2 furlong of
races, reading on ‘Prior Probabilities’ and Pierre-Simon Laplace (Father of the
Field of Probability) thought process expended to another consideration!
If we except (as I do) that there is a going allowance to be
factored in to times on artificial surfaces, is it possible that the
allowance should be applied ONLY to the finishing furlongs of a race given that
most horses react negatively or favourably to the conditions only once pressure
is applied?
As you can appreciate this will be a very time consuming undertaking so you will understand the infrequency of posts over the coming
weeks beyond posting the daily figs. BUT if anyone has thoughts on the question posed above I look forward hearing
from you ;)
.png)
.jpg)