Yawn.

I’ve been on nights at DFAT for the past few months after my last little spat with the owners of this website.

It’s been fascinating to watch the “gurus” defending their positions in relation to racing statistics and their use. Poor old ‘thoroughbred’ who pointed out some very poor ideas that were on offer was trenchdug by Chadban who is (apparently) a supporter of poor statistical methodology.

You see the problem is that people tend to believe the written word.

A lot of it is sheer rubbish.

Let’s examine the statement (paraphrased) which was published in shiny covered book form and swallowed whole :-

“18% of 1200 metre races are won by horses which have had a 46+ day spell”

This gem of wisdom is based on a sample of 1300 races.

When one examines 303,347 1200 m. races then you find that ONLY 8.3% of races were won by horses with this characteristic and horses with a 46 day spell have a winning Relative Frequency of 0.87 (1993 – 2003).

It appears that the originator of the original statistics ignored 99.5% of the available races and he wrote to me that “As a matter of interest my statistics were done over a period of 10 years and not 10 years of manipulated computer analized data.”

I would venture to suggest that 10 years of properly analysed data exposes the less than accurate data and conclusions that was peddled as the truth.

The REAL statistics say that in 1200 metre races you need to look at horses with <= 24 days since last start.

xxxx
F.