Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Recuperation


Yes, I'm still recovering. Physically I'm back to normal (other than my sleep schedule still calling for a disgustingly early wake up time), but mentally I'm still dragging myself back to things like work and the indoor arena. The princess seems to be of the same opinion. She was not overly enthused about getting back to work on the circles after a week of gallivanting about the country side of South Carolina.

I'm putting the both of us in a holding pattern until we get to the summer barn. The dust at the indoor bothers her, so it's probably not a bad idea to lay off. She didn't cough at all in SC, but coughed several times when I worked her yesterday. I think the cause is becoming quite clear.

In the meantime, I've assigned myself a project. Warning, this is where my profound nerd levels become evident. On COTH there was a discussion on whether or not riding multiple horses at a show had an effect on how safely the courses are ridden. Of course I promptly thought 'we can just check the results'. This means I am currently compiling all of the results for 2010 in a data base to check for trends around different types of non-completions. I'm such a geek that even the engineering hubby is left staring at what I do with my free time. I'll post the results on here, so everyone can stare in wonder at just how geeky I am. My current hypothesis is that we'll find no relationship between the number of horses ridden and the completion rate, but we shall see. I've been wrong many times before, I wouldn't be shocked to be wrong again.

There are hundreds of trials with hundreds of entries at each one. I think it will take about a week to get the data compiled. Has anyone seen my life? I appear to have misplaced it again. I'd really like to have one.

Assuming the weather holds, I will probably force myself away from my new database and take the princess out for a long walk in the sun this weekend. Maybe we can bribe her boyfriend to join us.

3 comments:

  1. Are you only looking at riders in the open divisions? Because if you're looking at riders with a single ride and not separating pro vs. amateur, I'd guess you'll find many more non-completions among those with only one ride because of lack of experience of the riders.

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  2. You actually can't split by division, since shows all divide their divisions differently. Some just run divisions A-D, some split by horse, rider, and open, some do a funky combination. And even then we run into some trouble, because I know I personally show in open a lot because the horse and rider divisions in my area are big. I am the absolute definition on an ammie.

    Keeping that in mind, I want to do a regression against number of rides vs. number of non-completes, specifically for people with multiple horses. The riders with just one ride will probably not even be included except as part of the baseline. The idea is whether or not there are more non-completes with 9 horses vs. 3.

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  3. That is an amazing project. I look forward to the results.

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