Derby Figures and Evidence

[TGJB]

Recently Eric said that no matter how many times we said it, there was no problem with the Ragozin Derby figures. He was referring to what follows, which was originally posted back in May, and based on how the Ragozin office responded, their idea of a trial would presumably be, one side presents evidence, and then the other side says, \"Nope, not true\", without answering the evidence. Of course, with the recent problems that I pointed out with their BC ground and figures, they haven\'t even done that.

Anyway, here it is. Draw your own conclusions.


There are two times of year when I look at the Ragozin figures and comment on them here-- in the spring with the 3 year olds, and for the Breeders Cup. I have pointed out an awful lot of problems in the past of all kinds, some of them of the variant (figure making decision) kind (SoCal sprint/routes,etc.), some of the ground loss kind-- Touch Of The Blues and several others being given wrong figures based on the ground being wrong in the 02 BC, Senor Swinger wrong in the 03 Wood (an error that resulted in wrong variant decisions being made and patterns being wrong on top 3yo\'s for months).

Now, we take the Derby pretty seriously. It\'s a big field, it\'s an important race, so we have two people do ground, and compare them. This year they came up slightly different on 3 horses, so we had them go back and look again (they had already looked a few times), and we eventually got it all worked out, and I did the race. It was a little tricky to do-- you clearly could not tie it to other races on the card, and an awful lot of horses did not fire, presumably because of the slop, so there wasn\'t much to work with. There were really only a few possible scenarios that needed to be examined, though-- from giving SJ his previous huge top, to giving him 3 points worse than that. Giving him his top would also have given Imperialism a 3 point top and LH a new top as well, and that seemed unlikely, especially under the conditions. At the other end of the spectrum we could have just paired Imp, which would have had 3 horses running 1-2-4 in the Derby while going backward, which also seemed unlikely. So it came down to doing the race either where I did it or giving them 1 point better, and the most likely scenario had SJ and Limehouse pairing their last, Imp going a little forward, and LH going a little back. If it ain\'t right, it\'s damn close, and considering the conditions (and commensurate lack of information) the best that can be done.

Anyway, when Ragozin posted his Derby figures I looked at them with great interest, as usual. At first glance it looked like he was giving them a couple of points slower than I did, which on their scale would mean a point or two faster-- they run 3-4 points slower than we do. I started with the winner, and there were some individual differences due to ground loss-- trackmen have tendencies, some use more of the \"fan\" than others, etc. This creates looseness of 1/2 point or so in everybody\'s figures, but I was looking for horses where the differences came to more than that-- like I said, we had two guys check the race thoroughly, so I was pretty confident ours would hold up.

But as I worked my way down, a funny thing happened when I got to Limehouse. All of a sudden they had given a horse 3 3/4 point worse. Aha! A ground loss error! The next horse, TCE, 3 1/4 point worse-- another one! And as I went down the list, it was true of all the rest of the horses! So we set up a chart, and this is what we found:

First 3 finishers, average deviation TG to Ragozin 2.33 points.

Rest of field, average deviation, 3.875 points.

Now, 1 1/2 points is a lot. In fact, it is 3 lengths at this distance. So there were 3 possibilities that I could see.

1-- Ragozin\'s trackman got the ground wrong for the first 3 horses by the same amount (about 3 paths each, combined 2 turns), getting them all wider than they were. That would be a hell of a coincidence, not likely.

2-- They got the other 15 horses wrong, each by the same 3 paths, all tighter than they should be. Even more unlikely.

3-- One of us got the beaten lengths wrong between the third and fourth horses, affecting all the figures from the fourth horse down.

3 was by far the most likely, so I immediately checked to see if we had it right. Equibase (where we get our data) had it at 2 lengths, we had them check it, they did and confirmed. I looked at the tape myself 3 times-- it looked to me like a fraction of a length more, but certainly not the extra 3 lengths that would account for the difference. We got it right.

But how could Ragozin get it wrong-- he does all that video frame counting stuff, right? We have a conundrum.

Look, guys-- this is THE KENTUCKY DERBY. If they get this one wrong, what does that tell you about their day to day work? Those small \"condition moves\" those guys are talking about all the time? You now know what the margin of error is for those-- plus or minus 1 1/2 points. IN THE BIGGEST RACE OF THE YEAR. And that is assuming that all else is done right-- see my DRF expo presentation on our home page.

Ragozin customers-- there are 2 ways you can react to this. One is to shoot the messenger-- get angry at me for letting you know. The other is to aim your anger and questions where they belong. As I said after the Touch Of The Blues fiasco, it will be instructive to see how the Ragozin office deals with this information.

[kev]

JB, How much is say 4W?? is it the same for sprints and routes?? Sounds like ground loss plays and big part into a horse race, and another thing how did you all come up with the way you all do your ground loss?? Thanks.

[TGJB]

It\'s basic geometry-- circumference of a circle increases by pi times increase in radius, which in this case is the width of the horse, which in turn is a little less than a third of the length of a horse. So it costs 1 length for every added path (horse) off the rail, regardless of distance. But what a length is worth in points varies with distance from 1 point = about 1 length at 5f, to 1 point = about 2 points at 1 1/4 miles.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

First part edited...wasn\'t accurate.

Hello "The Sheets", my old friend
I\'ve come to look at you again
Because a vision softly... creeping
Left its seeds while I was... sleeping
And the vision... that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams he ran alone
Hooves beat upon the cobblestone
\'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
And my mind was lulled by the glow of neon lights
That blurred my sight
and this amid the sound of silence

In hypnotizing light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People accepting figures that voices never share
no one dares...
Disturb the sound of silence

\"Fools\", said I, \"You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might reach you
Look at the numbers that they might teach you\"
But my words... like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the well ... of silence

And those people bowed and prayed
To their figure god they made
And then their god proclaimed this warning
In the terse words rarely forming
He said that: \"The words of the prophet are written down upon our sheets. They are complete.
Approve of them with your sounds... of silence.\"

CtC



Post Edited (12-08-04 17:25)

[JohnTChance]

It should also be noted that Ragozin\'s numbers
for the \'04 Haskell Invitational struck me, you and
other ThoroGraph users as stange too. But when
LION HEART wired the field, we didn\'t mind a bit.

JohnTChance

It sounds to me like they made a business decision to not publicly correct a series of incorrect figures because it was spotted by the competition. Let\'s face it, only a small percentage of their customers probably visit these boards. So most don\'t know or care.

I\'m still in the camp that believes some of the discrepancies between the figures have to do with methodology/pace issues and not quality. However, it\'s clear that in many cases they have some serious problems with track speed changes and carelessness.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

It\'s attention to detail. I\'m just as guilty of it. I blame Alzheimers for my ocassional lapses. The problem is if the big dances are wrong. What about all the small dances? I never had great success with that product and maybe thats my bias.

CtC

[TGJB]

CH-- you hit it on the head.

1-- Yes, most of the differences in figures have to do with differing methodologies, although I don\'t think it\'s simply a matter of opinion. I have gone to great effort to point those out and explain them, but they still go over the head of most of those who have not made figures. So I try to find examples where anyone with eyes and a minimal IQ can see that those guys have screwed up-- which would not be that big an issue except that a) they won\'t admit it and fix the errors, because b) they make claims for super accuracy, and pattern reads based on it, claims that would be blown to bits if people actually understood what we\'re really talking about here.

2-- Which means, yes, they have made business decisions, of the most cynical kind. The vast majority of their customers still buys hard copy and never hears about this stuff (not true of us-- 2/3rds of our business is now on-line), and it would cause the Ragozin office more of a problem with them to admit a mistake and change a figure than to look bad here. Aside from which, they cynically (and unfortunately correctly) calculate that their on-line customers won\'t call them on it on their board-- there has not been a whisper about any of this over there in the last couple of days. The most extreme example of this cynicism came when they blew the ground for Touch Of The Blues in the Mile a couple of years back, I pointed out that he was wide (not inside), and Friedman came back and posted that he had checked the tape himself and the horse was inside. Much later, when everything had quieted down, they made the correction.

And obviously, a similar situation exists with this year\'s Derby, and the bad BC figures. In one case they flatly denied without explanation, in the other they will just wait for it to blow over without commenting.

[Michael D.]

\"go over the head of most of those who have not made figures\" ...... stupid jerry. there is no other way to describe what you just said in that post. that was stupid. there are many people who clearly understand how you make figures, and how you tie races together, and simply do not agree with your methodology.

[Michael D.]

and if they made a bunch of mistakes over there on BC day, you can be sure i will bring it up.

[TGJB]

Michael, I have gone to great lengths not to call you names or characterize some truly astounding comments that have come from you. You will do the same if you want to continue to post here.

The responses I have gotten (and not gotten) to my posts about the more complex aspects of figure making, which are not easily demonstrable to the lay person, have indicated that an awful lot of those who have not made figures don\'t get it, independent of whether they agree. Some do get it. You read that sentence to say ALL? That\'s on you. You want to quibble about whether the number represents a majority? Have a good time.

The point is that I therefore have focused when possible on items that show an error that no one can fail to understand, or situations that demonstrate the silliness of the the Ragozin \"logic\", or contradictions within that \"logic\".

And you know what? The proof that I am right about the Ragozin guys has come in their response to these points, which they know about because they read this board. Do you know how many posts Ragozin got asking about the TOTB BC ground? Zero. They got exactly one question (from Beau) asking about the Derby lengths, and he backed off when they gave him a flat denial with nothing to back it up, despite the evidence I presented.

Over the last couple of days I have presented compelling evidence here that those guys made very significant errors with the data for the two biggest days of the year (and there was another one with the ground for the Distaff that I haven\'t bothered to go into). There has been not one post on the Ragozin board asking about that, from the guys who PAY for that data.

Who is stupid?

[Michael D.]

 you assume that most ragozin users don\'t understand how the ragozin group makes figures, and why they tie races together much less than you do. to many users of racing figures, that is a good thing, to others, it is not. i know many, many ragozin users, and they all understand this, and they stick with ragozin because they agree with him. based on my knowledge of ragozin users, what you said was stupid. ban me, no problem. two of the smartest people who have posted on this board have been banned (marc and alydar). i would not consider that a bad thing.

[Michael D.]

and jerry, let\'s not mince words here. in your post, you basically called most ragozin users idiots, and i thought that was stupid.

JB,

I use many sets of figures, but I rarely purchase from Ragozin. So I don\'t feel compelled to start any trouble over there by pushing the BC/Derby issue even though I do post there from time to time. If I were a paying customer I certainly would.

Actually, I would prefer to get along well with both camps.

Maybe someday one of you might offer me a job where I can combine my computer skills, horseracing/handicapping knowledge, and past pace/figure making experience and put them to good use. I\'ve had just about enough of my present job, but would like to retain at least some steady income. Keep me in mind.
:-)

[TGJB]

Okay, Michael, we\'ll play it your way. To use a line someone else used here in a different context, you have an amazing ability to read right through the point. You have done it in most of your posts here, especially on the \"Getting faster\" string-- you hear the general subject matter someone is talking about, but can\'t focus well enough to respond to the issues, so you just repeat a general statement over and over. And the betting is you will again in response to this.

In this case, I have made several SPECIFIC points about the behavior of Ragozin customers, and I have talked to a lot more of them than you have. In fact, I talked to one at length yesterday who called in response to my comments here. He was no dummy, and he bets a lot of money, and he didn\'t know anything at all about this stuff-- he buys hard copy, and this is the first he\'s hearing about it. He said nothing about agreeing with Ragozin\'s methods at all-- just \"why would that trainer use it if it wasn\'t good\"? Again, this was no dummy-- he just didn\'t know anything about the issues, and had a hard time believing Ragozin could make those kind of errors in the BC.

Focus, Michael. Do you see any posts on the Ragozin board asking questions about the Derby lengths or BC ground?