[Mitch44]

I keep saying that averages are very deceptive as are all stats. When a stat is stated the reader has no idea how that stat was collected. How something is gathered, is a very critically important or key ingredient to any statistical facts. And unless you're the gatherer there is absolutely no way of knowing the truth of the fact. And even then it may be a flawed study. Additionally common sense isn't used in the harvesting of facts.

In horse racing the game is fraught with facts. No one questions their validity and blindly accepts them. Case in point; it is stated that favorites win 33% of time and have for the last 50 or 60 years. Today this is no longer true because the game has changed with many more tracks, shorter fields, not enough horses to go around all of which which increase the number of favorites. And it always was that higher class horses are more consistent and have a higher % of favorites winning. Few have broken this down by class. There is a huge difference between older G1 horses favorites winning % and the % of the lowly NW2L etc. type races. Remember that 33% encompassed all and the worst races brought down those averages.


As far as stats for horses under 30 days returning paying more than horses with longer layoffs. well I find that suspect at best. Most likely there were one or two longshots in there that distorted the average price. Definitely not the norm. I wouldn't include such horses in that study or even the lowest ones. One should be looking for the median of that category not the abnormal exceptions. I stated a horse I saw a horse laid off for over a year at Tampa and coming back with a suspicious drop that won and was made the favorite, definitely not a normal occurrence.

There always abnormal occurrences of things and will always be, especially in horse racing. We should be looking to capture the many not the exceptions. Also nothing burger stats mean just that to me NOTHING.


Mitch44