griff wrote:Kimberly Mine
I believe we are on the same page. I don't have in stock in Bop but he is a good case in point in that his oldest foals were born in 2005 and started racing in 2007 at the earliest.. Since we are talking about 2009 stats that is two years of racing for about half his foals to race and one year for the other half.
In other words comparing the life time earnings for three and four year old race horses with life time earnings for 6, 7, or maybe eight year old horses is not valid; i.e., life time avearge earnings per starter definitely gives the stallion with older get a big edge..
griff
Griff--
I think so, too, even if we're looking at things in different ways. I am merely a strong adherent to The Mark Twain Theory (lies, damn lies, and statistics), and like to see statistics--which are unitless, valueless quantities in and of themselves--used intelligently. You have to look at a whole bunch of things to give any one number context. The skewed average of Real Quiet is a textbook example of failure of the straight-up arithmetic mean.
As you pointed out, having a stallion with lots of older foals can skew the numbers, but so can having a lot of younger foals, especially for a stallion whose get don't tend to perform well as juveniles.
Current case in point: Pleasant Tap. He has 789 foals of racing age, 91 of which are juveniles of 2010...nearly 11.5% of all his foals. Since none of them have started, his percentage of starters to foals of racing age looks comparatively weak at 67%. Take out the babies who are too young to even start, and it rockets up to 76% starters/3-and-up progeny. And since this is Pleasant Tap we're discussing, a stallion not exactly famous for getting precocious juveniles, that large crop will definitely skew his numbers downward for at least 2 years.
And FWIW, I quite like the Partner's Hero idea.
