When making par time charts...

[TravisVOX]

I've gathered my data for the most part from 1999 in NY. I want to make par time charts as a basis for a lot of calculations I will be doing.

When making these charts, does everyone agree to generally include ONLY 3+ male races, or is it best to include the younger/female races, but apply the general adjustments for age etc.

I find that, with Belmont Park for example, that I would have no pars for the 3YO races had I not recorded them from the original data.

Thanks!

[sjk]

I use filly races with an appropriate adjustment. If you do the males and females separately at first, you will be able to determine the right adjustment.

I also use only 3&up, 4YO, and 4&up races and of course no state-breds.

[Tom]

I make pars for each class/sex/age group from the data, no canned adjustments.

[TravisVOX]

Tom...

What do you use to store your data? Excel, Access? I'm trying to figure out the best way to do this...Excel would be great, but I don't know the best way to lay out my spreadsheets...my original plan calls for a sheet per class...many many sheets! Haha.

[sjk]

I have over 8000 track/class combinations so more complexity would be unwelcome. The canned adjustments for fillies have always given me good results. I would not even attempt to make pars for younger horses.

I use Access. I don't know of any way I could manage this number of pars with Excel.

[Tom]

I store data in access, but do all my work in Excel- I think it the much better program for actually working with numbers.
I update my pars every year, too. Season to season, various calsses will just plain suc. Expecially at NYRA tracks-some years 3yos are ok, but some they are pathetic.

[TravisVOX]

What are your thoughts on table structure for this? A table for each class...with tables for all ages/sex? Or, do you have one major source for data and then just filter out what you need when you do it yearly?

[Tom]

I have one main table that I take data from. After I manipulate it, creates figs, etc., I store it on a worksheet in an Excel Spreadsheet.

[QuarterCrack]

This winter I compiled and arranged par times for MNR using Excel. I set up a separate worksheet (those tabs at the bottom) for each distance (5f, 5.5f, 6f etc.) and then within those I set up columns for male and female races and then beneath those I set up "subcolumns" (if that's a word) listing the class, second call time, and final time. I considered 3YO races as separate classes (like Alw25kN2L as a different class than Alw25kN2L for 3YO) and then after I had all the data in (2 years) I sorted the worksheets by class and everything came out fairly neatly. I let Excel do all the averaging, excluding races that had silly times (like when they first winterize the track and it's like 7 seconds slow, for example.)

Not that this is the best or only way to do it, but I found it to work out pretty well.

[TravisVOX]

Ahhh yes, I didn't even consider doing sub-columns....terrible as that does sound. Thanks.