LG
The future must be the past transitioning though the present and the more present in the equation the closer the result.
Lets keep it to horses.
The past data will show if a horse has the ability to win against the other horses in the field. This data could a week old, 2 weeks old or in the case of resumers up to 6 months old.
For this data to be relative it must also include all the events up till now. Now nominally being the last chance to bet. The present being the time from last recorded data until now. This additional data has to reflect all the events for all the horses in the field. Most of this data is not accessable to the average punter. This additional data has more bearing on the result than the historical data. Hence we must find the horse most likely to win from the historical data. We must then add the present data. The more present data we have added , the truer the result.

In most cases we do not have any present data so the basis of our selection is solely historical data. The only present data that we can tap into is the market. But what info is in the market? Is it real? Is it additional? Or was it just Joe Bloggs dropping his 10 large on the fav, purely because it was the fav, 2 minutes before the jump?

The bottom line is that the more real present time data that we can add to our historical selection the closer we will be in choosing the winner. Beton