Quote:
Originally Posted by LongShot_Louie
You are truly wise. Measuring data with a micrometer makes little sense considering it was collected with a fish net in the first place. But I do like the academic side of these discussions.
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Thanks LL. I've been called lots of things here but you're the first to say wise.
My point was really asking, where does the attempt at more precision stop? Let's take calculating figures to the extreme. What are the factors involved? Well horses' times, of course. To that I say, how accurate is the timing? Are the people looking for precision hand-timing the races? How are beaten lengths being determined? From charts? From watching videos and doing it yourself? What about wind? Did you account for the variability in wind speed? Surely it's not constant. How was it measured? I know this is a harness term, but what about cover? There has to be some effect on time/speed running behind other horses versus running "uncovered".
What about track surface? Banking/radius of the turns? Adjusting for differences in sea level. The exact path of the horse's trip. The alpha horse. The herding instinct...Stop me when I reach the "number of ridiculous factors" level. Measuring all of this stuff is simply fraught with error, so imo, just use the goodenough numbers.
