It was once my job to set the the horse racing morning line for a daily newspaper.
Many people assume the morning line offers the odds a given horse will win, when it is actually a predictor of what the betting public will do in response to that horse on that day against the other horses in that field.
There's a specific mathematic formula that basically allows a fixed number of "points" per race, thus the more horses you assign a high probability of bettor support (short odds) the longer the odds on the others have to be.
Once the race starts, you gauge your success not on whether you gave the winner the shortest odds, but if the betting public bet the most money on the horse you gave the shortest odds.
You're not betting on horses, you're making calculations based on how you expect people to react to horses.
Thus having handicapped horses and having handicapped people, I like horses much better.
In a horse race there are intangibles like "racing luck" but overall it's a clean, linear thought process. There is much to be said for clean, linear thought processes.
I like those formulas and at times like these, I miss those formulas. Almost every key area of my life is attached to unknown variables. When will we move? That depends on when the house sells. Where will you move? That depends on where I get a job. Are you going to keep writing? That depends on what my agent says about this manuscript.
Every time the phone rings, every time the mail comes, I'm poised for a change that currently has no defined course.
I used to hate the math part of figuring the morning line.
Now I miss it.

Copyright 2004 Judi Griggs