>>> Or anyone else. I have this sheet printed from www.worldfengur that >>> appears to be a >>> numerical listing of scores applied to Toasa and Yrsa's sire. Most of it >>> makes sense, >>> although since he has 102 for walk, I guess 100 is not a perfect score.
You might want to stop reading while you still think it makes sense! Evaluation numbers range from 5.0-10.0. Numbers that are in the 100-ish range are BLUP scores, and from a mathematical/computer modeling point of view (and yes, I have career expertise in the area of computer modeling) I can tell you that BLUP, as used in the Icelandic Horse system, basically means "blooper." :) There's an old saying in the computer world - GIGO, which means Garbage In, Garbage Out. If yout input data is flawed, then your calculated results will be flawed. There are so many flaws in the inputs used to calculate BLUP, that it's downright embarrassing. I think Judy has a page on her website, quoting some posts I made on the subject years ago, and I seem to remember that our Penny Hodge also had input on the subject - Penny is a DVM, and I think she has a MS in Animal Science. I can trash the whole idea from a mathematical modeling/statistics viewpoint, and Penny (I'm pretty sure it was Penny? It was several years ago, so maybe it was someone else...) saw the flaws from the Animal Science perspective. In short, BLUP doesn't hold up to scrutiny from any angle. I think Janice basically summarized part of the flaws in BLUP the other day. How was it she phrased it? It would be like predicting that one of our daughters would look like Madonna if we just died our hair blonde, had a nose job, liposuction and other plastic surgery... You simply cannot predict the genetic future based on human-influenced characteristics, especially if the characteristics being judged aren't 100% objective and quantifiable. It was when I saw what BLUP was, and how laughable it is, that I REALLY lost all faith in the Icelandic evaluation system. It's junk science. Karen Thomas, NC
