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Author here - funny to see this posted after a few years. Happy to answer any questions!

by tlyleung 1y ago

fidotron 1y ago
Great write up. [am idiot]
- 4gotunameagain 1y ago
  Please read the first paragraph of the post again. The original author of the paper is Bill Benter, and the GP is the author of this excellent writeup.
- tlyleung 1y ago
  Sorry - to be clear this is just re-running the model detailed in Bill Benter’s 1995 paper (he uses the time period 1986-1993) on more recent time periods (1996-2003, 2006-2013, 2016-2023) using PyTorch.
  - markoman 1y ago
    Nice work. Have you made available the CSV of this data, or is it easily obtainable using horse racing information online? I didn't see how that HKJC site offered it in CSV format. Perhaps you scraped the data to generate your CSV? Thank you.
jeffreyrogers 1y ago
How did you choose the artworks for the artworks section of your site?
- tlyleung 1y ago
  It’s a hi-res artwork from Unsplash that I’ve sampled random croppings from.
GreyZephyr 1y ago
Did you ever try extending it out to other methods of probability estimation other than the forms of regression? I have only skimmed your excellent article, but I think you are first calculating the average probabilities from a regression model and then minimizing the loss to calculate Harville corrections for place and show markets? Is that correct or am I missing something here? I guess I am curious if there has been any improvement on using regressions for combining the various initial odds as I don't really follow the literature anymore.
- tlyleung 1y ago
  Yes! There have been big improvements since then but they are beyond the scope of the post. I just wanted to reproduce the calculations in the paper using PyTorch. Bill Benter subsequently replaced the multinomial logit model with a multinomial probit model, which assumes Normally distributed errors rather than errors that follow the Laplace distribution.

Author here - funny to see this posted after a few years. Happy to answer any questions!

fidotron 1y ago

Great write up. [am idiot]

4gotunameagain 1y ago
Please read the first paragraph of the post again. The original author of the paper is Bill Benter, and the GP is the author of this excellent writeup.
tlyleung 1y ago
Sorry - to be clear this is just re-running the model detailed in Bill Benter’s 1995 paper (he uses the time period 1986-1993) on more recent time periods (1996-2003, 2006-2013, 2016-2023) using PyTorch.
- markoman 1y ago
  Nice work. Have you made available the CSV of this data, or is it easily obtainable using horse racing information online? I didn't see how that HKJC site offered it in CSV format. Perhaps you scraped the data to generate your CSV? Thank you.

jeffreyrogers 1y ago

How did you choose the artworks for the artworks section of your site?

tlyleung 1y ago
It’s a hi-res artwork from Unsplash that I’ve sampled random croppings from.

GreyZephyr 1y ago

Did you ever try extending it out to other methods of probability estimation other than the forms of regression? I have only skimmed your excellent article, but I think you are first calculating the average probabilities from a regression model and then minimizing the loss to calculate Harville corrections for place and show markets? Is that correct or am I missing something here? I guess I am curious if there has been any improvement on using regressions for combining the various initial odds as I don't really follow the literature anymore.

tlyleung 1y ago
Yes! There have been big improvements since then but they are beyond the scope of the post. I just wanted to reproduce the calculations in the paper using PyTorch. Bill Benter subsequently replaced the multinomial logit model with a multinomial probit model, which assumes Normally distributed errors rather than errors that follow the Laplace distribution.