[BobJoeJim]

As much as I love to live and die by statistics, I think there's an interesting psychological way to look at this too; a classic example of how you can end up second guessing yourself.

Start with this hypothetical: There was an actual, systematic reason why the favorites covered so often last year. If true, do the books adjust? If so, then all bets are off (no pun intended) as to whether faves or dogs are a better pick this year. On the other hand if the books stubbornly stick to their guns, believing last year was just a statistical abberation, there may be a lot of money to be made hammering faves.

Now then, what if the books make an adjustment to correct, but last year in fact WAS due to random chance? Suddenly dogs look great! I could also see the books doing something like this to a lesser extent, to exploit the public if they think last year's trend meant something when it actually didn't. "Oh, you're going to bet all faves, regardless? Here, let's just make the line 7.5, not 6.5 then."

But on the other hand... go ahead, finish this sentence yourself, it's fun!

Okay, of course nothing I've said here is actually particularly useful, I don't think. It is a fun little thought experiment, though, if you like getting caught up in logic loops and paradoxes [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]