Everyone seems to want something different--so good luck, Nathan!--but I still believe the single best improvement to Equisim would be the addition of multiple paceline selection to the program. It allows you to test certain aspects of a horse's ability to compete that a single paceline method has trouble confirming. Just my opinion, but one borne from having modelled a ton of data using most of the different combinations under the sun. Different strokes....

Jake,

I'm going to look hard at adding that feature for this upcoming release. If I can pull it off it will work thusly (unless I'm shown the error of my ways...):

A) The program will only have simple algorithms for selecting multiple pacelines. You'll be able to say - auto-select the last X races. Or, perhaps, X races that match today's race in criteria a, b, and c. It will be able to save multi-selected pacelines in the same way it can save your selections today.

B) You will set how you want multi selected pace lines to work. You'll be able to choose Average of all selected or Median of all selected. What this means becomes apparent below.

C) There are three things that make use of the "selected" pace line. The Summary Report, the Simulations, and the Profiler. Now they look at the selected pace line of a horse and use the various attributes of that pace line to do whatever. With multi-selection, there will be "some stuff" that knows that a multi-selection is in place. It will then calculate the numbers for a single pace line from the multiple pacelines using the method specified (see B above).

There are a few things deep in the bowels of ES simulation land that actually look at fractional times of the selected pace line as well. Don't know what I'm going to do there.

Feel free to chime in on any feature/implementation ideas.

-N

Nathan,

Your approach sounds great. I have always worked with blended averages, rather than median numbers, since I generally use only two pacelines and never more than three pacelines in combination. This seems to work well.

Someone has mentioned using Procaps on this board, and that program has a decent default screen for setting up paceline selection methods, i.e for distance, surface, and recency plus primary selection factor. No doubt you're familiar with it.

I'm hoping that your plans will include the option of user selected multiple pacelines from the pp screen as well. Automatic methods are nice, but never seem to work as well as roll your own paceline selection.

Oh yes, I meant to say that the main focus will be on user selected multi-pacelines, and only simple select most recent X pace lines will be supported for auto-matic selection.

-N

if x pacelines or used please make it be able to
use EXample( last 5 races where surface is muddy)
( last 5 races where surface is fast or good)
( last 3 races where surface is turf and firm)

matix_man