I've hesitated to reply to this post because of the intimidating nature of the replies. Some of the terms in the replies are over my head and others are hard to understand, even with my decades of both horse race handicapping and a career in Information Technology. Some background... I was there at the dawn of both mainframe and personal computers. My career spanned most jobs in IT from computer operator up through installing and maintaining IBM operating systems on mainframe computers, a job that left me as a burned out former shell of myself.
Let me explain how I see computers and horse racing from a simple person's point of view using a seat-of-the-pants type of regression analysis and forecasting. My personal computer system uses basic math with only square root as as its most exotic function. The language is Microsoft VB.Net. It's a black box type of system where at the end of the process you push a Forecast button and a day's races are calculated in under a second. The approach I use isn't an end-all, be-all solution to computerized handicapping and it probably never will be. However, it continues to show promise and I intend to make it better. See THA Free Picks here at PA for an example.
PIC6SIX posted "Maybe someone would like to go through their step by step handicapping process and how long it takes to hcp an 8 race card at one track. No handicapping secrets asked." and here's my response.
Short answer is:
* Download CSV PP data files for the track.
* Select the parameter file for the track with a button.
* Select the data file for the track with a button.
* Click the Forecast button.
Total time is less than a minute.
Longer answer is:
* Download a full year's CSV PP data for a track.
* Build a data base with the downloaded data.
* Run a regression analysis on the data base to calculate and optimize parameters for jockey, trainer, speed, finish, earnings, workouts, lead tendency, and closer tendency.
* Combine these base factors into a single rating for the horse. If FTS or foreign factors have data missing, use the mean of the other horses' factors.
* Calculate several hundred conditional factors and their opposites to pair with highest rated horse.
* Select the best of the profitable factors for possible betting.
All of this is done programmatically except for the download.
Do the short answer above as needed.
As they used to say in IT, this is the view from 50,000 feet, meaning that a lot of detail has not been mentioned.
My hat's off to those who drilled deeper in earlier replies.
