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Old 02-16-2012, 11:21 PM   #1
Handiman
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Database Discussion for Handifast

Looking for some input. I'm working on designing the database. What I want out of the database is to be able to check setups and see what kind of results different ones would produce. Since I am not a database guru I'm sort of befuddled.

It seems to me that every time you want to check a certain setup the entire base of races have to be run using that particular set of numbers. new setup to test then entire base of races have to be run again. Is there an easier way?

Handi
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Old 02-16-2012, 11:30 PM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Handiman
Looking for some input. I'm working on designing the database. What I want out of the database is to be able to check setups and see what kind of results different ones would produce. Since I am not a database guru I'm sort of befuddled.

It seems to me that every time you want to check a certain setup the entire base of races have to be run using that particular set of numbers. new setup to test then entire base of races have to be run again. Is there an easier way?

Handi
Deciding how you are going to build your database is a lot easier if you have a general idea of what you want to achieve and or test for performance. Spend more time designing than building as changes to your database further in to the development cycles will kill your motivation and make it more difficult to use (measure twice cut once mentality).

Here is a place to start.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-relationship_model
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Old 02-17-2012, 02:30 AM   #3
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I know you are going for simple. Maybe consider something like this:







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Old 02-19-2012, 01:27 AM   #4
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Here's what I'm thinking. Since Handifast is set up to rank each category and top 4 horses get points in relation to their rank, building a data base would cause all races to be run and each horse would be given rank number in each category. Then user can assign points to the different categories and run query returning results based off of the setup being tested.

Sound about right?

Handi
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Old 02-19-2012, 10:34 AM   #5
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Maybe I am misunderstanding but in order to find out if the point setup is "optimal", wouldn't you have to run all possible combinations of point setups against the actual results? Basically this is backfitting, but the program could be designed so that the user could split the data -- maybe 75/25 or whatever is statistically best -- and then run all of the combos on the 75% and then see if the settings "go forward" by testing it on the remaining 25%. That way the point model wasn't biased by the results of the 25% as that data was not included.
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Old 02-19-2012, 05:53 PM   #6
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Isn't the use of Databases in general back fitting. Finding out what has been successful in the past? Looking for the optimal settings would require doing just what you mentioned Head, but that would be 20 raised to the 10th power iterations I think.

What I was thinking about is everyone has some idea of what factors are important or ones they like to include. Bu doing as I said, they could test out their factors and different point settings for those factors until they found the best setups for their particular factor set.

Anyway that is what I had in my head. But as I said I am looking for as much input as I can get before I start the design and then the coding.

Handi
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Old 02-19-2012, 07:34 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by headhawg
Maybe I am misunderstanding but in order to find out if the point setup is "optimal", wouldn't you have to run all possible combinations of point setups against the actual results? Basically this is backfitting, but the program could be designed so that the user could split the data -- maybe 75/25 or whatever is statistically best -- and then run all of the combos on the 75% and then see if the settings "go forward" by testing it on the remaining 25%. That way the point model wasn't biased by the results of the 25% as that data was not included.
A nice way to test is to split the data in half. Fit using the first half and test on the second half. Then fit on the second half and test on the first half. Compare results from both and draw conclusions.

Mike (Dr Beav)
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Old 02-19-2012, 11:53 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Handiman
Looking for the optimal settings would require doing just what you mentioned Head, but that would be 20 raised to the 10th power iterations I think.
What's 10 trillion iterations among friends, Handi.
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Old 02-20-2012, 12:07 AM   #9
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User places all available BRIS .drf or Jcapper .jcp and comma delimited results .xrd files for same year into one folder.
__________________________________________________

The user pushes ONE BUTTON and Handifast imports the first .drf\.jcp data file along with the corresponding .xrd results file. Handifast loads data for first race and removes scratches and applies any surface changes discovered in the results file. Handifast then generates all twenty factor rankings and creates a "RACE CATEGORY" key for each horse that describes the Track, Class, Distance, Surface, and age (young or old). Handifast then saves the rankings, race category key, and finish position for each horse to a "RANKED" table.

Handifast processes all races for the card and grabs the next data file in the year folder. Repeat the same procedure until all files for the year are processed. If you had all race cards for the year, you would end up with a "RANKED" table with approximately 40,000 horses.

Handifast then processes the "RANKED" file and builds impact values values for top four rankings for each of the twenty factors in each category. Save these results to a table named "IMPVALUE"

Handifast then looks at each race category in the impvalue file and selects only the top performing factors based on impact values. Handifast then creates a "BESTOF20" results file containing only the best performing factors in each race category. All steps above could be automated and the user ends up with optimized category factors with the push of ONE BUTTON..
__________________________________________________

Now we are ready to play today's races. Place todays .drf\.jcp files into a folder called "today" and push ONE BUTTON. Handifast processes all race cards for today and creates an oddsline for each horse based only on the best performing factors for its race category.

The 40,000 horse RANKED table, the IMPVALUE table, the BESTOF20, and TODAY'S files should be exported as a "comma delimited" files so that database or spreadsheet uses can easily access all the data.

Handifast could automatically print a one page report for each race card containing only minimum horse data and optimized odds-line.

Gene

Last edited by JustCoolGene; 02-20-2012 at 12:19 AM.
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Old 02-20-2012, 09:34 AM   #10
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Um...Handifast is a free program. There might be some stuff in your post that Handi might use. If you want custom programming I am sure that can be arranged for a fee.
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Old 02-20-2012, 10:38 AM   #11
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JustCool,

What you have described is a very watered-down version of what my software does. I assume that most other commercial products function in a similar manner.

Not quite as automatic, because when you are dealing with several thousand factors for each horse, you've got to choose the factors you want tables for (if that is your chosen method of handicapping).


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Dave Schwartz
PS: we don't use BRIS files.
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Old 02-20-2012, 03:31 PM   #12
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You guys have to remember I'm not a rocket scientist. I had one science class in school and that was Biology. And I spent the whole time looking down the blouse of my beautiful lab partner, so didn't develop the science part of my brain much.

While 'just cool' has some cool stuff laid out there, I am a simple country boy that is thinking that I want to develop a way to ferret out the best setups I can find, without having to have my computer running continuously for the next 3 or 4 years working through the 10 trillion iterations.

Again, I'm between 'Dumb as mud' and 'Smart as a cricket' so I do have coding boundaries.

Handi
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Old 02-20-2012, 04:50 PM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Handiman
You guys have to remember I'm not a rocket scientist. I had one science class in school and that was Biology. And I spent the whole time looking down the blouse of my beautiful lab partner, so didn't develop the science part of my brain much.

While 'just cool' has some cool stuff laid out there, I am a simple country boy that is thinking that I want to develop a way to ferret out the best setups I can find, without having to have my computer running continuously for the next 3 or 4 years working through the 10 trillion iterations.

Again, I'm between 'Dumb as mud' and 'Smart as a cricket' so I do have coding boundaries.

Handi
Handi,

Nobody 'Dumb as mud' and 'Smart as a cricket' could ever create Handifast. You enlightened and influenced many on this board with your many contributions.

Everything I described would only take one night of processing on a 3.0Ghz processor and fast hard drive. Processing thirty race cards on a Saturday in June would only take maybe 15 minutes. But that's not the point. If you have coding boundaries, maybe you should work on automating the processing of race cards and building an export table containing the rankings, values, and selections with the push of only ONE BUTTON. Handifast users could then export the table as a CSV file. Database and spreadsheet users would then have easy access to Handifast data. Users could "ferret out the best setups" and re-type into Handifast the newly found optimized setups for different distances and surfaces .

During one of Dave Schwartz HSH Insider's Club Shows, he mentioned that this year he was going to release a stand-alone program which would allow users to import their own custom factors or output from other programs such as Handifast. Users would then have the ability to create consensus type of selections uses no HDW data or any other data source. He said the new software had some very cool features. This new software would be an exciting option for all users of horse racing software. Dave is always thinking of new ways to help horse-players, he is a great asset to this "game of ours".

Gene

Last edited by JustCoolGene; 02-20-2012 at 05:04 PM.
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Old 02-20-2012, 05:12 PM   #14
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A simple solution would be to make the output of the program exportable to either Excel or Access or both. My home made program runs in Excel and I have some small macros I made that splices specific info from the program's output into an Excel database.There is more elbow grease involved as I manually enter results in the database. But I only keep serious tabs on 2 tracks at a time so it's not that labor intensive.May be an intermediate solution for you, but for me it fills the needs of a query.
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Old 02-21-2012, 12:47 AM   #15
Handiman
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I started coding the database part of Handifast and as usual I'm doing this ass backward.

I don't know what I'm doing.
I don't know how it's going to work.
I don't know when I'll be done.

So stay tuned I guess. I do have a general idea, but as the coding progresses I'm expecting it too all fall in line.

Handi
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