Figure Making Methodology - Repost

[TGJB]

JB is still on vacation but wants to make sure everyone reads the post he references often.

It is originally from 2 May 2000 - The direct link to the original post and the ensuing threads is available at

http://www.thorograph.com/Ask/archives/3988.html

Recently David Patent posted a question on this site which, although barbed, raised some important questions concerning the making of figures, and the differences in methodolgy between Thoro-Graph and Ragozin. For those unaware of the background, the issue at hand is the dramatically different figures assigned by yours truly and Ragozin to the Wood Memorial - we had the race going fast, with several horses running new tops while Ragozin had it going even faster, substantially, with 5 of the 12 horses jumping to big new tops.
The point I made in earlier postings is that since the track was sealed early in the card and opened just before the Wood, since it rained during the card, and since every race after the third was around one turn, using these races to make the Wood variant and figures was crazy, and would result in giving out crazy numbers. In response to a question on Ragozin\'s site Friedman said that was exactly what they had done, although he didn\'t seem to think there was anything wrong with it.


David then posted his question, most of which follows here:

\"I finally think I understand how TGJB got the variant for the Wood -- he made it up.
By this I mean that he apparently decided what the a particular horse or horses should have run in the Wood and constructed the variant to fit the pattern that he believed should have held for those horses in that race. Brown ridiculed the use of surrounding races as \"silly,\" so he clearly did not use the surrounding races to get the variant. So, the question is, if not the surrounding races, what can one use?
I have read before comments by TGJB to the effect that he will at times fit the numbers to the pattern he believes should prevail rather than accepting what appears to be an unbelievable number.
Now, that may or may not be a sound way of handicapping, but how can you possibly prove or disprove such a method? As such, one who makes numbers by this method has no grounds to criticize another maker of numbers except on the basis that horses cannot move or should not move forward or backward more than a particular amount in a given race. That seems to defy logic and history. Horses do crazy things all the time. It seems to me that we must have some anchor to tie our numbers to, and if not, then it is pure guesswork\".


For starters, let me say this: Even if it were impossible to make figures based on one race, it would be wrong to tie it to surrounding races in circumstances like this - you would be no better off than tieing it the same days races at Keeneland, or the races of the same day a year earlier at Aqueduct. I mean this literally.

Aside from the weather,aside from the other races being one turn, the fact they sealed and unsealed the track, especially with water in it, makes comparison a no-go. It is, in effect, two different tracks.In a situation where it actually is impossible to do a figure -- like Chilukki\'s debut last year, when the track was obviously changing speed and the field was all first-timers -- you are better off not making a figure than making a misleading one, and we left boxes for that race.

But it\'s seldon impossible -- most of the time it\'s fairly sraightforward. David is right -- horses do crazy things all the time. But groups of horses seldom do. That is the whole theory behind the \"projection\" method of making figures, used by Beyer, Myself, Ragozin, etc. -- that the past histories of horses can be used to predict future figures. If that premise is wrong, not only can\'t you make figures, you can\'t use them to predict the outcome of races. And if you make a mistake,like Ragozin did with the Wood, it compounds itself because you will use those figures to make later figures.

Where David is wrong is that he says I use the patterns of the horses -- I do that minimally. Mostly you use the speed (ability) of the horses. To ovesimplify it, if you have a race where a lot of older horses with tops of 10 are running 5, you did something wrong. Obviously, if you have a situation with lightly raced horses and a weather change (or it\'s the only grass race of the day, after a dark day, and it rains that night), it\'s gonna get tricky. That\'s where judgement comes in. And I feel compelled to point out that at this point I\'ve done a lot more track days than Ragozin has -- for the last decade, I\'m pretty sure he\'s only been doing two circuits, and even before that never more than six. I\'ve been averaging around 10 for 20 years. My judgement is pretty good.

David\'s other question was, in effect, how do you know who is right. Well, you don\'t find out by blindly following dogma. You find out by checking to see which figures correlate well with results in the long run, and by using common sense. For the former, we have set up the Red Board Room. For the latter, I raised this issue to begin with, and I think anyone who is not blindly partisan gets it. But I\'ll go further.

We\'re going to post the entire Wood field, with the numbers they ran. David, why don\'t you see if you can get Friedman to do the same, and tell me which makes more sense. Assuming they won\'t do it, look at ours and tell me how they would look if they were two points faster (keep in mind our figures run a couple of points faster than Ragozin\'s).

We\'re also going to re-post a response of mine from a year ago, that deals with these and related subjects in more depth.


From posting 2/25/99:

Back in the \'80s, when I had only been making figures a few years, the Belmont meet began. The Widener and inner grass courses, which for years had running at the same variant as each other, suddenly split in no consistent pattern. One day one would be five to six points faster, the next day the other would, it would stay that way for a couple of days, then they would be at the same speed. It was clear from looking at the horses at the time something was going on, but what? It made no sense.

So I sent my top track man (Bill Spillane) out with a tape measure, figuring something was wrong with the turf rails (0, 9 foot & 18 foot), or the starting gate was being positioned incorrectly. No dice. Spillane said everything was right. I had no explanation, but since it was clear from looking at the horse\'s figures I continued to split the variants anyway.
 
Connie Merjos was Ragozin\'s NY track man at the time, and a friend of mine from my Ragozin days. A couple of weeks into the meet he stopped by to say hello, and I asked him what the hell was going on. He had no idea what I meant--Ragozin had not been splitting the variants. A few days later he called me back to say that he had talked to other figure makers (Lawton, etc.) and every one but Ragozin was splitting. And now Ragozin had sent him out with a tape measure, but he had found nothing, so Ragozin was continuing to use one variant for both courses.
 
I wonder if anyone has figured out the punch line.

A few days later Spillane had to hang around the track late, and happened to be there when they turned on the sprinklers--Widener course only. The courses were being watered on different days.

The day after I found this out I told the story to Julian Weinberg, who had switched from Ragozin to Thoro-Graph (he later worked for us) but still had friends in their office. Julian went over to 11th Street to say hello, and told the story to Bob Beanish (for which I threatened to remove his windpipe). According to Julian, Bobby thought it was silly, called Ragozin over, and told him the story. To which Len replied, \"So that\'s what\'s going on.\"


The point is this: make as few assumptions as possible. In Robert Heinlein\'s Stranger In A Strange Land, a character, when asked what color a house is, says \"the two sides I can see are white.\"

I make no assumptions about the relationship between one and two turn races because I have found the relationship changes often at virtually at all race tracks (see Monmouth)--I hardly look at one when doing the other. I make no assumption that track speed is constant throughout the day even without weather change because I have found (contrary to a statement in Ragozin\'s book) that it often does change, especially at tracks near large bodies of water (see Bay Meadows).

Here\'s what we know: horse\'s past figures can be used as a guide to what they will run in the future, and to what they ran on the day for which you are doing variants. How do we know? It\'s the premise. If it is wrong, not only are all speed figure methods invalid, whether projection or class level, but the whole exercise would be pointless--they would be useless as a predictive tool for betting races.

How do we know the premise (and figures) are right? By the results of races. If the results correlate with the figures, the figures are right. If not, they are not.
Here\'s what we don\'t know: we don\'t \"know\" the relationship between sprints/routes is a constant, we don\'t \"know\" two contiguous grass courses have the same variant, we don\'t \"know\" track speed stays constant all day because the weather doesn\'t change, let alone stay constant one day to the next (an argument I had with Ragozin when I was there--if there was no precipitation between days he assumed no change). There\'s a lot people \"know\" that we don\'t know.

We do know that much of what we use as underlying data is inherently inaccurate. Wind speed is estimated by a human being who is looking at flags (on the roof or infield, not the track itself) before and after the race, not during. And the true effect of wind has a lot to do with direction, since there\'s a very large structure (grandstand) right there that wind bounces off. Incidentally, Ragozin uses airport wind at some tracks--hourly readings taken miles from the track.

We also know that 5 pounds = 1 point, which both Ragozin and Thoro-Graph use, while a good estimate, is not accurate. But since we can\'t get the body weights of the individual horses, it will have to do.

We know ground loss is estimated by humans, and some of these guys tend to use more of the \"fan out\" (top of the stretch) than others, and some are more conscientious than others.

So, given the above, we know that claims of super accuracy due to video frame counting etc. is the equine equivalent of counting angels dancing on the head of a pin. Accuracy, indeed, depends more on the judgment and common sense of the figure maker than on the raw data, as you said.

TGJB

[Alydar in California]

1: Is your nickname from Guys and Dolls?

2: There was no need for you to slave away resuscitating the archives. The same posts were available by doing an author search on \"goofything.\" Next time, just ask. Hate to see you working while JB is on vacation. Exploitation and all that...

[Silver Charm]

Alydar,

Enjoyed the debate.

TGJB,

Thanks for the Free Seminar.

[nicely nicely]

Alydar in California wrote:
>
> 1: Is your nickname from Guys and Dolls?

Yes. Nicely Nicely Johnson -- originally portrayed by Stubby Kaye on B\'way and the movie.

>
> 2: There was no need for you to slave away resuscitating the archives. The same posts were available by doing an author
> search on \"goofything.\" Next time, just ask. Hate to see you
> working while JB is on vacation. Exploitation and all that...

He was waiting on the golf course to tee off and figured it was a good time to make use of his Free Anytime Minutes.

It wasn\'t much of a bother, but thank you for your concern.

[Alydar in California]

\"He was waiting on the golf course to tee off\"

Excuse me while I step away from the window.

\"It wasn\'t much of a bother, but thank you for your concern.\"

Hey, Irony Irony, it was just an expression of my latest attempt to get in touch with my inner woman.