I'm reading
Winning At the Races by William L. Quirin. At the bottom of page 2 he talks about ..
- NH: Number of horses.
- NW: Number of winners.
- WPCT: Winning percentage of the horses under study."
Then in the middle of page 3 he writes ..
"... the important statistic
%W will be used frequently, especially when studying handicapping characteristics common to several horses in a race. When just one horse in a field can have a certain characteristic, such as being the favorite, %W will be the same as WPCT."
What's giving me trouble is figuring out how these are calculated. When only one horse can have the characteristic it's easy ..
- WPCT = NW / NH
- %W = WPCT.
In these cases NH is the same as the number of races. But how are the two calculated when more than one horse in the field can have the characteristic, such as horses with 8 speed points?
I'm thinking that..
- WPCT = NW / number or races
- %W = NW / NH
or maybe it's the reverse?
I know that this should be terribly simple but I'm finding that it's not. Thanks for any help.