So many posters, so little time. I won\'t get to everything, but...
David-- From my post of 5/2/00 (in response to you), which Paul reposted a couple of days ago: \"The point... 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 (emphasis added)\".
Your response to that post (directly below it in the archives, which are now working) began \"First, I want to thank Jerry for a temperate and well reasoned response to my question\". You did not at any point say anything to indicate I had misstated Friedman\'s position, because I had not.
I think the possible source of confusion here has to do with the concepts of using the SAME variant for two races, and that of TYING a race to the surrounding races. Both are ultimately the same thing conceptually-- see my \"smoking gun\" post. You either realize that you have to cut a race loose, or you don\'t.
JimP-- You ended up where you did because Marc blurred the issues as much as he could (talked past me, in your terms). The original statement I made was \"...the two services have extremely different philosophies of figure making which result in dramatically different figures on occasion, so both can\'t be right\". By this I meant that both philosophies can\'t be right. That statement is true, for all the reasons I went into in following posts, but it is not mutually exclusive from some of the statements you made-- it just has nothing to do with them.
When you say that all figures are imperfect, you are preaching to the choir. I\'m the one who says they are subjective, and that anyone can blow a figure-- I\'ve said it before on this site. But the two different philosophies MUST sometimes produce different figures even though the figures are supposed to represent the same thing, so AT LEAST one of them has to be wrong in those cases, BY DEFINITION.
On the other hand, there are situations (lots of them) where we will come up the same way-- track doesn\'t change speed (this years BC, for example), or the sprint/route relationship is constant. This results in there being overlap between the figures both services put out, and some degree of randomness in the results achieved using both.
Alydar-- First of all, the importance of an event may not increase by virtue of Silver Charm\'s presence, but his KNOWLEDGE of it may. That knowledge-- work done on the track-- is crucially important if you make all the assumptions Ragozin does tying one race to another. SC\'s information about CD that day is exactly as relevant as Spillane\'s about the Belmont grass course some years ago, detailed in my Figure Methodology post.
(reposted 1/30/03). The way I do figures, I made no assumptions about the relationship between the two courses, or two track sufaces 4/28/99, so I was able to make the right decisions.
Why did Friedman enter the tournements? For the same reason(s) everyone else did. No, he did not have anything to lose-- everyone knows they are a ridiculously short sample. While we are on the subject, I would point out that Wolfson\'s win was exponentially tougher, since he had to win/do well in an earlier tournement just to qualify.
Is Friedman a good handicapper? I know better than probably anybody else, since we spent hundreds of days handicapping cards together-- given the same data, we would come up with the same opinions more frequently than either of us would with anyone else. He is-- but that\'s not the question. The question is how good is the data he is using, or whether his other skills (or rebates) are good enough to overcome it\'s deficiencies.
The question is not whether Ragozin said in his book they take track maintenance into account, whether Friedman ever said they never did, or even whether they ever do. The point was that Friedman said they did not do so on Wood 00 day, despite all that happened, which is why his comment last spring was significant-- it indicates they should have cut the Wood loose, contrary to what he had earlier claimed. My guess is that they posted figures for the day before Ragozin found out what had been done with the track, and Friedman was stuck defending it, or that they did what they appear to have done with the Chilukki race-- use a correction based on broad averages. And no, it is not an aberration-- see 9/15 Belmont, among others.
And the importance, as Silver Charm points out, is that \"these days get at the core
of the philosophical differences between the two competing products\".
I do not care what
YOU (Alydar,as opposed to Friedman)
THINK (meaning interpret)
FRIEDMAN
MEANT (as opposed to what he said).
Words have meanings. Physical resilience(y) is a thing that can be measured-- they do it with golf balls, using a machine that hits balls with the same impact, loft, and dirction every time (clearly they don\'t use me). When we were kids, we had a method for measuring the physical resilience of the spaldeens we would use for stickball-- we would hold them out at shoulder level, and drop them on the sidewalk. When they were new they would bounce back to chest level. When they only bounced back to belt level it was time to get a new ball.
Ragozin and I aren\'t dealing with physical resilience, we are dealing with track speed. And we\'re not measuring it objectively, we\'re judging it based on the performances of racehorses. When they create a device similar to the ones used for golf balls, one that circles the track before every race, they\'ll be measuring it, and Len and I will go home.
Friedman\'s comments about \"physical resilience(y)\" and \"objective numbers\" were intended solely to create an impression that their numbers are scientifically accurate. The statement is marketing tripe, and has no basis in reality.
Marc-- I have no problem with Ragozin guys posting here-- I encourage it. My problem is with (being nice about it) your debating style. If you come here, come correct. Fair warning.
