| Bf | (i.e. Before) | Incoming rolling handicap for use in this race
|
|---|
| The rolling handicap from before the race is used to compute corrected times.
|
| Std | (i.e. Standard) | Fixed standard handicap for seeding and normalization
|
|---|
| The standard handicap seeds the rolling handicap for boats that have not raced before
and (collectively) sets the gauge for imputed handicaps.
|
| Imp | (i.e. Imputed) | Imputed handicap of this race from elapsed time
|
|---|
| For a race, the imputed handicap would make all boats with meaningful elapsed times correct out as being tied.
Additionally
the geometric mean of all such imputed handicaps will be equal to
the geometric mean of all the standard handicaps for the same boats;
this is what we mean by setting the gauge.
|
| Af | (i.e. After) | New rolling handicap for use in a subsequent race
|
|---|
| We use imputed handicaps to calculate handicaps for subsequent races.
|
| In our two-phase handicapping regression, the second phase is new for 2025.
We have changed from a moving-window average to a walk with step sizes clamped to prevent overly large jumps.
A walk is a kind of rolling average where the weight ascribed to a given race in the rolling handicap gradually decays
from race to race.
Only an imputed handicap and the rolling handicap for the immediately preceding race is necessary to compute the
new rolling handicap.
|
