Project Background Info:
Growing up I used to always watch the Kentucky Derby since a big portion of my family was from Louisville, Kentucky. This year my girlfriend and I decided that we are most likely going to live in Lexington Kentucky (the horse capital of the world) which got me more interested in the history of horses, especially horse racing.
For this project I wanted to compare all race horses from the modern-era (1940-present) to see how Secratariat stacks up against all of the other horses in the three premiere races, the Preakness, the Belmont and the Derby.
Steps:
- Ask
“How does Secratariat’s finishing times stack up against the other horses in the modern-era?”
- Prepare
I searched through multiple databases to cross-reference and compare to find the most accurate and complete dataset which led me to https://horseracingdatasets.com/ This site was created in 2015 since there was a real need to have a complete database of all of the horses and their respective races. Jessica Chapel, a leading expert in the field, played the biggest role in ensuring the database is accurate and complete http://jessicachapel.com/
The type of data I was needing in order to complete this analysis was the races top finishing times, the winning horse and the year which this site luckily had all of that information.
- Process
After double checking the datasets for outliers and missing data, I removed uneccessary columns and rows including, years prior to 1940, sire, dam, notes and the distance. Then I merged all three of the races datasets into one Excel file.
