Horse Racing Strength

[ExcelRaceRatings]

Hello all,

I am looking to produce a rating (number) for a horse based on it's previous race strength figures. In the below example the highest race strength is "19" but i want to be able to rate the horses based on Starting price (lowest to highest) and Last Start Margin ((lowest to highest). So a horse that started in a Race Strength "8" race at $3.20 and beaten 0.5 lengths should rate higher than a horse that started in a Race Strength "12" at $16 and beat 4.9 lengths.

Can any statistically minded people offer some advice on how this possible and the formulas required? Thanks in advance.

Race Strength	Starting Price	Last Start Margin
8.00	3.2	0.5
19.00	41	6.7
18.00	26	3.9
7.00	6	1.5
2.90	2.25	-0.4
3.00	2.9	1
13.00	11	7
12.00	16	4.9
7.00	4	0.8
10.00	26	12
12.00	51	8.9

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[BlueHornet]

I can't give you formulas or statistics (or tell you anything at all about horses beyond what's obvious to anyone who has watched a Western). You'll have to figure out some kind of method to rate them based on the characteristics that you believe to be important. I can give you a sort-of example.

In large, long-term and complex construction projects the builder always wants to be able to say "how far along are we?" We've tried rating things based on size, weight, number of pieces, number of welds, size of welds, location of welds (welds high up in the structure, or made from a scaffold, are generally more expensive, because they take longer to set up, complete and inspect, than welds on or near the ground or a floor level). So, how do you reconcile all of those factors? For us it's fairly simple: Once the equipment and material are all delivered to the site, it all comes down to man-hours. So we estimate each line item of the equipment scope "how many man-hours to complete?" and that gives us a line-item weighting of each item's importance to the overall completion of the project. Then it's just a matter of "counting" (not man-hours, but the things that we already know: number of pieces, number of welds, etc.). So if the item's contribution to the project weighting is, say 2%, and we've completed 50 of 100 total welds, then we do 50 ÷ 100 x 2%, and this item's contribution to the total is 1%. Add up all of the line item percent-completes, and you know the project overall, within an acceptable margin of error, and you can demonstrate that.

So you need to come up with some way to weight the value of each of the various aspects you want to track and convert it into some kind of acceptable common denominator, so you can effectively compare price to race strength to last start margin in some acceptable way, even though you can't do it directly.

Good luck widdat.