So said a horse racing aficionado I recently met.
“Really? Wow! Tell me about it,” I said. “Not so loud,” the tipster whispered, “I don’t want to share the information with everyone. Here’s what I know.”
“I’ve read all the statistical studies and compiled my own special data. What I’ve found is that brown colored horses have a 75% greater probability of winning on Wednesday if they also have a white spot on their chest.”
“Even better,” he continued, “that 75% probability is increased to 230% higher probability of winning if the horse is running in the 4th race of the day and has had at least 1 weeks rest.”
“What’s the horse’s name,” I asked. “Dunno,” he replied, “don’t need to know.”
(image courtesy of brenzett.net)
Evidently he believed there was no need to know anything about the specific brown colored horse with the white spotted chest in question. I asked him why he thought this was such a sure thing. He said that he had run thousands of races through a statistics program and had rigorously calculated for populations of brown horses with white spotted chests running on Wednesdays in the 4th.
I asked him whether there weren’t periods when the horses he was recommending to me had losing streaks within the complete set of races he’d analyzed.
“Oh, well, yes” he replied, “but I haven’t spent much time analyzing that dimension of the data.”
“Ok,” I said. “But given that we don’t know anything about the specific horse I’ll be placing the bet on, my bet should be small, right?,” I asked.
“Oh no. You should bet big,” he exclaimed. “Go ahead and bet everything you own.”
I thought about placing a bet for a bit but then decided against it. I just couldn’t bring myself to place a bet on a horse about which I knew really nothing including his most recent racing record.