Fun with NSTRA data

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nhachman
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Fun with NSTRA data

Post by nhachman » Thu May 12, 2016 9:41 am

In my professional life I have some dealings with data analysis and like to play around with data sets to answer questions of curiosity. Disclaimer: I'm not saying any of this is statistically sound nor am I making any statements about who is the best dog/breed/etc. As the post title says, this is just for fun.

In my free time, I have been doing this with NSTRA data on dogs and their points accumulations and such. For example, I wanted to know where my dog Katie ranks among Brittanys of all time based on total points accumulation. The answer was 216th out of 1488. Same question but limited by dogs whelped in the last 10 years, 48th out of 308. Same question but expanded to all breeds, 364th out of 2685.

I was also curious to know, out of all dogs that have placed 1-3 at least once, how many went on to become at least a 1x Champion? The answer was 3210 / 7941, or 40%. I wished I had data on dogs that have competed but never placed, but they don't make it into the database.

Question: Who are the top 10 dogs as measured by total points accumulation of direct sons/daughters that competed and placed? And what was the average points/dog?

Answer:

Offspring - breed - sire - total points - average points per dog
100 English Pointer CROW'S LITTLE JOE 3535 35.3500
114 Brittany NOLAN'S LAST BULLET 3529 30.9561
59 English Setter TOMOKA'S SMOKIN MIKE 2243 38.0169
108 English Pointer HONKY TONK ATTITUDE 2211 20.4722
64 English Setter CH TEKOA MOUNTAIN SUNRISE 1729 27.0156
39 English Pointer BLACK MAGIC JAKE 1526 39.1282
36 English Setter ANGIE'S DOGWOOD SKIPPER 1449 40.2500
38 English Pointer COPPER NICKEL 1443 37.9737
43 English Pointer STEPHENS BRIGHT COPPER 1265 29.4186
49 English Setter RESA'S TROUBLE MACE 1239 25.2857

Question: What is the total points accumulation by breed, and average points per dog? (I left out breeds with less than 100 dogs placed)

Answer:
Dogs - breed - total points - average points per dog
5648 English Pointer 82705 14.6432
3622 English Setter 65325 18.0356
3053 German Shorthair 40016 13.1071
1488 Brittany 19862 13.3481
382 German Wirehair 3345 8.7565
131 Vizsla 1009 7.7023


If anyone else who is interested in having a question answered let me know and I'll see if I can.

The data points I have are dog name, owner, region, breed, sex, whelped date, sire, dam, # championships, # total points and date of first championship.

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nhachman
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Re: Fun with NSTRA data

Post by nhachman » Thu May 12, 2016 9:59 am

Top 30 dogs by total points out of all breeds, from all time.

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DonF
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Re: Fun with NSTRA data

Post by DonF » Thu May 12, 2016 10:13 am

I don't think your gonna find anything of value until you match them up in trials won. Nolan's Last Bullet had 32 championships. How many time's would he need to run to do that? A whole lot! Do the same figure's but take into account how many trials were run to reach that level. I'm not so good at math but if he won every trial he was in, that's 4 pts for a win and 16 needed for a championship, I'm thinking he'd have had to been down 128 time's and win every time (think I got that right!).

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Re: Fun with NSTRA data

Post by nhachman » Thu May 12, 2016 10:25 am

Don, you're right in that the data I have is not a complete picture. The value I'm finding in it is mostly entertainment and to provoke thought. The data regarding how many trials a dog ran in is not available, so we can't take that into consideration. I would really like to see that data so I could figure things like winning %, etc. but it simply isn't tracked. I have ran Katie in numerous trials, but I expect it wouldn't be a tenth of what Buddy ran in his lifetime. In NSTRA, a weekend trial win is 3 points, and you need 3 wins and a total of 18 points for each championship. So for Buddy, 32 championships would have required 96 first place points. An exception however is national placements are worth double and I believe all finals points for 1st - 3rd count as "first place points". Buddy had a few of those..

I am working on getting the detailed data for individual trial wins for each dog, but that will have to wait for my next available "free time" I have to play around with it.

Nick

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Re: Fun with NSTRA data

Post by rinker » Thu May 12, 2016 11:39 am

I think the fellow's name is Frank Thompson, that used to publish a book/magazine called the 'Pointer Breeder's Almanac'. He attempted to quantify probability of a specific sire producing a field trial winner. There are critical pieces of information missing, however. You don't know how many pups a sire produced, especially because many are never registered. Many pups also go to hunters with no intention of trialing etc...

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Re: Fun with NSTRA data

Post by Dakotazeb » Thu May 12, 2016 12:23 pm

Nick, for Buddy to be a 32X champion wouldn't he have needed 288 first place points (32x9)?? I think it's tough to compare your dog, or any dog, to these statistics. Like you said, how many trials did Buddy participate in? Dogs like Buddy and Adam Feller's Nose who is a 20X champion must be running trials nearly every weekend. Here in our Mid-North Region we are lucky to have 5 trials a year. To run as many trials per year that some of these dogs do takes a lot of time and some very deep pockets.

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nhachman
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Re: Fun with NSTRA data

Post by nhachman » Thu May 12, 2016 12:35 pm

Yeah, my wording is the problem, I meant to say 96 wins assuming a win is always worth 3 pts. Again, I'm not putting this out as definitive proof to make a case for best dog/breed/lineage/etc. Just answering questions of curiosity with the data that has been collected and is available to me. Does number of trials ran, level of competition at those trials, etc matter? Absolutely, but for the purpose of this analysis those are unknown variables. My intention of this thread was and still is to be a "just for fun" analysis of the available data.

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Re: Fun with NSTRA data

Post by Dakotazeb » Thu May 12, 2016 2:04 pm

I understand the fun part of the data. What would be fun to know is what percentage of dogs that ever compete in NSTRA ever achieve their Chanmpionship? I would think that percentage would be quite low if only 40% that ever get a placement become at least a 1X Champion. With running as few trials as I do, and never providing my dog with any training for the trials, I feel quite proud that she was able to become a 1X Champion basically just on her natural instincts. So now I have a Champion, a super pheasant dog and the most lovable pet I've ever owned. I'm one happy and lucky guy!! :D

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Re: Fun with NSTRA data

Post by Ninevehn » Fri May 13, 2016 2:32 am

Interesting numbers, nhachman! I didn't realize NSTRA data was so open.
rinker wrote:I think the fellow's name is Frank Thompson, that used to publish a book/magazine called the 'Pointer Breeder's Almanac'. He attempted to quantify probability of a specific sire producing a field trial winner. There are critical pieces of information missing, however. You don't know how many pups a sire produced, especially because many are never registered. Many pups also go to hunters with no intention of trialing etc...
Is this it: http://www.fieldtrialpointers.net/PBA.HTML

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nhachman
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Re: Fun with NSTRA data

Post by nhachman » Fri May 13, 2016 7:10 am

Ninevehn wrote:Interesting numbers, nhachman! I didn't realize NSTRA data was so open.
Well, it's not.. it took a bit of doing to accumulate it somewhere that I could run my own analysis. :wink:

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Re: Fun with NSTRA data

Post by Ninevehn » Sat May 14, 2016 12:09 am

Hah! Well, good for you accumulating it all then. I wish more records were open.

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Re: Fun with NSTRA data

Post by RayGubernat » Sat May 14, 2016 3:42 pm

A bunch of years ago, when NSTRA was sanctioned by and reported in the American Field, I compliled the relative win percentatges for the four major competing breeds for a couple of years. \

I found it interesting and instructive that there was essentially no significant difference in the "win" percentage of pointers, E.setters, Gsp's and Brittanys, when the wins were adjusted for the number of each breed that had been entered. I counted placements in total, not just wins. I kinda figured that most of the folks who were competing were more interested in whether there was an even playing field that just focusing on the winners.

If your data set includes the number of each breed that is entered in each trial and the breed of the placing dogs, you could generate the percentatge of placements by breed, as I did.

I was very impressed that the data showed that, no matter what breed of pointing dog was entered, they all had an equal chance to place. I sincerely hope that is still true in NSTRA.

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Re: Fun with NSTRA data

Post by DonF » Tue May 17, 2016 10:11 am

I think it probably is still true Ray. NSTRA had a lot of good point's but on any given day any duffer could win. best way to judge them is to go watch them yourself, in person.

I've wondered just how many trials Nolans Last Bandit ran in? It used to be, if I remember right that placement point's could be carried over. In other words, you could have 30 placement point's without the 1st place win's needed. Then win a couple first place's and only the placement's needed to finish a championship were deducted from the point total the dog had.

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Re: Fun with NSTRA data

Post by RayGubernat » Tue May 17, 2016 12:34 pm

DonF wrote:I think it probably is still true Ray. NSTRA had a lot of good point's but on any given day any duffer could win. best way to judge them is to go watch them yourself, in person.

I've wondered just how many trials Nolans Last Bandit ran in? It used to be, if I remember right that placement point's could be carried over. In other words, you could have 30 placement point's without the 1st place win's needed. Then win a couple first place's and only the placement's needed to finish a championship were deducted from the point total the dog had.

I certainly hope so, Don.

There are those who focus on the top tier of any competitive sport and field trials are no different in that respect. I do realize that my dogs and I will likely never be in the top tier of competition, but I still enjoy competing and value the knowledge that the playing field is at least somewhat level. I suspect there are many more folks who feel as I do.

I have never done NSTRA myself, mostly because my abysmal shooting would seriously handicap the dog, but I felt good knowing that, in NSTRA, no matter what the pointing dog you brought to the line looked like... you and your dog had a fair shot at it.

RayG

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Re: Fun with NSTRA data

Post by Dakotazeb » Tue May 17, 2016 1:53 pm

NSTRA is a fun game and you can take it as serious as you want. I started for something to do with my dog in the off season. Little did I know when I started that my dog would Champion herself with absolutely no field trial training. For the most part the best dogs are going to win more often but any dog can win on a given day. And it doesn't take a real big running dog. Case in point, we have a guy in our region running some GSP's that you would laugh at if you saw them. They are huge dogs (one male is around 90-100 lbs.) with big, long floppy ears. They don't move very fast but the darn dogs can find birds. This past weekend at a trial he took 2 first places. I use to think I had the advantage when I drew him for a bracemate as my Brittany can run circles around his dogs but I don't feel that way anymore.

Ray, don't worry about your shooting. Give NSTRA a try. Sometimes a miss can be to your advantage as I missed a bird this weekend and my dog bailed me out. Bird flew over 100 yds. before it went down. When my dog got there if popped and flew another 100 yds. Elle found it again and it popped and flew another 50 yds before she finally got it. Helluva retrieve and the judge gave me a score of 96. If I'd hit the bird and the dog had a short retrieve I'd probably have gotten a retrieve score 10-15 points less.

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