The right general approach

[tommyG]

Don\'t answer if it\'s going to open a can of worms, but How did you learn your method of figure making?

[TGJB]

I started at Ragozin, but didn\'t make figures for him, and argued with him about methodology even when I was there in my early 20\'s. When I left there I didn\'t know too much, it was mostly trial and error over a period of time.

[tommyG]

You must have known SOMETHING to have argued with them/him over methodology.

[TGJB]

Tomorrow, when I\'m back in the office. Mets-Yanks, Nets-Heat. Big night.

[Boscar Obarra]

tommyG Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You must have known SOMETHING to have argued with
> them/him over methodology.

We all knew something in the 70\'s. We know a lot more now. So by comparison, to be fair, we knew very little.

[jerry]

Wind derby day was WSW at 10 mph with 25 mph gusts and max gust of 31 mph. The stretch run would have been straight into the wind. Would it be telling to much to reveal what the wind speed was during the stretch run? Seems like a 31 mph gust would slow things down a bit.

[TGJB]

Re arguing with Ragozin over figure making (more correct than saying about methodology, I wasn\'t making figures there and had very little idea how it was done):

The basic setup at that point was I was a young kid doing work in exchange for using the sheets to bet, and a lot of what I did was pull the file cards alphabetically from entries, and put them back after they ran (there were no computers, a sheet actually was a cardboard graph, and only a couple of people worked there). This worked out well for me because I handicapped all those races (Ragozin was only covering 4-5 circuits back then as \"hard\" figures), and as I put them back I would look at each sheet and get to see what they had run, to learn.

Anyway, I know I raised issues a few times, but there\'s only one I remember clearly. As I was putting this NY day back I became more and more puzzled because nobody on the whole day had run a top-- it was clear the whole day was off, 2-3 slow. I went to Len and said you got this one wrong, it\'s not close. He said no, track\'s been the same speed the whole week. I said, I don\'t know about the rest of the week and it doesn\'t matter. That day is wrong.

So he didn\'t say anything, but the next day I came in and he said you\'re right, it was wrong. The track changed speed. But when? So he changed the day, and went off to review the rest of the week.

I didn\'t really think about that conversation until much later when I went out on my own and started making figures. But essentially, Len was making an assumption-- that track speed stays the same unless you actually know of a reason why it changed, not only during a day but from day to day, EVEN IF IT MAKES THE FIGURES YOU ASSIGN VERY UNLIKELY. He makes a similar point in his book by implication, when he says you need to know what day of the week the track superintendent does his work so you\'re not fooled when the track changes speed. That particular line of thought is so ----ed logically I could do a whole post on it. I had been making figures for quite a while by the time the book came out (1996?), and I was shocked to read that-- it had never even crossed my mind while I was learning my trade to make crazy assumptions like that. And in the one situation I remember from back then it caused Len to get a whole day wrong by a lot.

[Boscar Obarra]

I don\'t ever remember  even being tempted to conclude that every day was the \'same\' , even in the early days.

 What would have promoted such a conclusion?  How can you be so sophisticated as to include run ups and wind, but fail on that front?

 Sounds implausible, no?

[TGJB]

It goes to the whole large population/small population study thing, and a reliance on pars (and other averages).

On the one hand, Len thought in those terms by using one track speed for the day (let alone for several days). On the other, as he says in his book, he would sometimes base an entire day on one horse-- in other words, his own judgment about what a certain horse should run and an assumption about nothing else changing would determine the figures for all the horses that ran on a day. Which might be the dictionary definition of chutzpah.

[TGJB]

Mike-- Did you ever hear back from the drop hammer man?

[miff]

Dr.MP is such a busy man, active college professor. I sometimes get a reply a week later, but he\'ll answer. I\'m guessing he may be looking into the background details of derby day, esp weather.He knows just about every track super at the major venues.

Have you seen the comments of the CD track super stating that he was well aware of weather and added extra watering.He stated the derby was not run on a surface with diminished moisture content i.e. The track did not slow down for the derby.

Wind seems to be the only possible culprit for an unimaginable 2.03.66 on a fairly glib surface.


Mike

[TGJB]

It\'s good the track super was conscious of the moisture issue, but unless he tested for moisture content (which can be done) he doesn\'t know for a fact that it was the same. Slight differences can make a significant one in track \"speed\", a point we covered in Changing Track Speeds.

In the end the way you know how fast the track is, is by how fast horses run over it. And this is not a situation with a 5 horse field of maidens that was rained off grass.

[miff]

Agree but it does not explain the 2 subsequent dirt races which went way fast relative to the derby. One a sprint, the last a route. Track was fast, slow for the derby, then fast again.....far out there.

[TGJB]

That\'s a little unusual but not extreme, especially when you\'re talking about a long gap before the first one.

[TreadHead]

There doesn\'t even need to be a debate right?  How many times did the water truck go by in between each race?