Quote:
Originally Posted by dilanesp
He has a very mixed legacy.
He certainly cared about the game, wrote about it, and studied it. And he was very intelligent.
But Dosage was a classic example of the over-statisticalization of the game based on overly small samples. And every year, around TC or BC time, I hear a bunch of BS statistics based on small samples and retroactive fitting (such as that Exaggerator couldn't win the Preakness because Derby runners-up never do). And Dosage was the grand-daddy of such theories-- a completely arbitrary, back-fitted theory that tried to predict something that had a tiny sample size.
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As usual, another good post, dilan.
I was a huge Strike the Gold fan and he was my Derby horse. But Dosage was just about at its peak and all the talk in racing. All I recall was my friends calling me an idiot because of Strike the Gold... that he couldn't win because he was over the 4.0 Dosage number that all Derby winners needed to be below to win.
I still bet him that Ky Derby day and of course, I was happy as hell when he won.
Then, all of a sudden, his sire, Alydar, becomes a chef-de-race, and Strike the Gold qualifies!! The Roman Dosage system still lives!
While I truly and sincerely appreciate Dr. Roman's research, etc., the Dosage Index was always a joke to me.