View Full Version : "Random" match Schedules
Ben Piecuch
02-03-2007, 17:07
What is going on with the "random" scheduling at the regionals? I'm here watching VCU, and the same teams are playing over and over and over...
116 vs 122, all 6 matches so far.
401 vs 405, all 6 matches so far.
343 vs 339, all 6 matches so far.
In NJ,
25 vs 11, 3 of 6 matches.
25 vs 41, 3 of 6 matches.
In PNW,
114 vs 192, all 4 matches so far.
488 vs 492, all 4 matches so far.
I think you get my point. If you dig further, you'll find that the "random" software picked groups of adjacent team numbers, and just cycled them in the same pairings. This is NOT good for the competitions, as it just makes the strong strong, and the weak weak.
Could someone from the GDC PLEASE tell me that this will be changed for the following weeks of competitions? I feel very sorry for the teams competing this weekend...
BEN
Travis Hoffman
02-03-2007, 17:09
Wow, that's even worse than past years. And I thought our IRI schedule was stacked in previous seasons. Can't wait for this year.....:rolleyes:
My kingdom for a randomizing algorithm!
Joe Ross
02-03-2007, 17:22
From the St. Louis thread:
Does anyone else think this match schedule is weird!?!?
I mean, 148 goes against either 217 or 45-- everytime. It looks like the same initial block of matches being run over and over.
148 also always has a rookie partner. Not only that, but every team with a 2 or 3 digit number always plays with 2 other 4 digit numbers. There also isn't a single match with all 6 teams being 4 digit numbers, which should happen about 10% of the time.
This was a issue at the Winter WarZone scrimmage in Suffield, Ct 2 weeks ago.
I guess the software people did not think it was a problem! I know they were told it would be.
Another year with scoring system problems...who figures!!
Danny McC
02-03-2007, 17:37
Yeah. I was wondering this myself. Because all of our matches today we went against team 716.
Guy Davidson
02-03-2007, 17:51
Yeah. Watching the webcast of VCU (we don't compete until week 3 *tear*) I kept noticing pairings of teams competing againsty each other.
This is not a pretty situation. From my initial analysis, the algorithm seems to be grouping teams based on their team number, and cycling through these groups. As a result pairs of teams are seeing each other repeatedly. This is not fun for a team who has to play the same powerhouse repeatedly. Also, it gets very stale, very quickly. Hopefully the software is modular enough to handle a new algorithm, that can be implemented for the rest of the season.
AcesPease
02-03-2007, 18:20
This was a issue at the Winter WarZone scrimmage in Suffield, Ct 2 weeks ago.
I guess the software people did not think it was a problem! I know they were told it would be.
Another year with scoring system problems...who figures!!
This was definitely pointed out at the Winter Warzone scrimmage, and I was led to believe that it would be addressed before the regionals.
Our experience was to play all 3 rounds with the same 5 other robots. Robots that could only play defense so the scores were 0-0, 2-0, 0-0, no working ramps to try out between the six bots. This was Not the varied cross section you want when tuning up your robot at a scrimmage. And this could not lead to a fair shake for a good robot that ends up opposite the same power robots round after round.
Ian Curtis
02-03-2007, 18:53
At BAE, team 238 will play team 1153 8 times. Teams receive 8 matches.
At first, I thought our situation was bad (we played Buzz 3 times). I later found out that there are several instances of teams playing other teams (4+ times). We play either 1277 or 1247 in every single qualifier.
I never thought I would say this, but I want Hatch's schedule algorithm back (and theres wasn't particularly good). :(
On a positive note, the new field control can stay, although a timer would be more useful than a bar on the big screen.
Luckyfish05
02-03-2007, 19:01
PantherTech (292) is playing ThunderChickens (217) 5 times over the course of this weekend. Not to say that we don't like playing you guys, but we'd just rather have you on the same side of the field. Yep, I don't think this algorithm is up to pair and needs to be fixed. Hopefully people are playing attention and something can be quickly worked out.
Dan Petrovic
02-03-2007, 19:01
Yeah. We are against 151 for 4 matches. Against 172 for 3 (which was quite scary considering their great ramp!)
There were many instances when we were with someone of match, and against them the next.
I wasn't exactly happy.
At least we aren't up against 126 or 175 ever... right?
galewind
02-03-2007, 19:03
Also, it's peculiar that all of our round numbers are the same:
9,19,29,39,49,59,69,79
Neo3One3
02-03-2007, 19:11
Today we played 172 and 190 4 times
We were never with or against Gael Force
These alliances aren't very random
Please Please Please. I am not trying to bash any team. My apologies go out in advance if anything I say can be taken in any negative way towards any team. The teams have absolutely nothing to do with the schedule and if asked they would all probably wish it were different. I followed the VCU regional today and after reading other posts in this thread I wondered if anything like that happened at VCU. I looked at the team in first place, I am not naming the team here because I am not trying to draw attention to them, just trying to point out that something is wrong with the algorithm that is being used. I know, I know, now everyone who reads this can go figure out who I am talking about. You have to be able to demonstrate proof of what you are saying and the only way to do that is to provide the information. They were against another team six of the seven matches they played That team is in 60th place. My guess is that both of thse teams would have much rather faced a variety of opponents instead of eachother quite so many times. Again, my apologies go out to each of these teams. In the four years I have been envoled with first I can not ever remember a time when the team I mentor would be with or against maybe a couple of the same teams for an entire regional.
Because of this scheduling, we will not have had the opportunity to play with or against 34 of the 58 other teams at the regional...
I believe this match system is going to make for some very interesting elimination rounds.
d.courtney
02-03-2007, 20:26
These results are no different then the findings I had from Waterloo last year, mind you Waterloo is a very small regional, making it harder to mix up teams while still giving them a good enough break in between matches (was the reason given when I approached the issue). After approaching FIRST about this at a debriefing, I had the chance to see the code they used for Waterloo, it was in fact very well written. There was however a problem, this was that this program didn't "reset" the algorithm after breaks such as the end of day or lunches causing teams to almost stay in a loop of teams they play with every match introducing one team into those they last played with as it ranked having a longer break for the team more important then who they were playing against. I changed this in that code adding a set number of resets, and saw a far more "random" selection between the days, and even better adding 2 more breaks. These two extra breaks are very accomplishable, if FIRST was to say add two 10 min breaks in the day one before and one after lunch, these breaks would also be logical as to allow the volunteers a much needed short break, allow any syncing problems with scoring to be worked out, and a multitude of other practical reasons. I relayed back my solution to the one that made the software, hoping these minor changes could be made.
It could very well be that this "looping" effect where you see teams play with or against others many times, is simply because they don't have resets for the algorithm, or it could be because the algorithm was poorly designed, either way it is a problem FIRST knows about and I find it unfortunate for those teams who have been effected that they haven't solved it yet.
edit: mind you there never was a problem with teams playing against a team all the time... say if they were stuck in the "loop" with said team, a few would be with a few against
Team 2021 plays against team 2028 in all of our matches I believe.
Pavan Dave
02-03-2007, 20:31
Quote from artdutra:
* The reason matches are not completely random is because of the algorithms used to "randomize" the matches. Although it may seem like random, adding little things like a minimum time span between a single team's consecutive matches alters the randomness of the results. Now the results are no longer 100% random, but rather the sort of "equally-spaced-out-data" random that people generally associate with randomness.
It is not really completely random. You are more likely to play with the same people that you were competing with and against rather than someone else that is minutes out of your range due to the algorithm FIRST has in place.
Akash Rastogi
02-03-2007, 20:35
this is absolutely true of the scheduling. the so called randomizing is making the strong stronger and keeping the weak at that same level of performance. This is not helping gathering any significant data during scouting eith:ahh: er. What are they going to do about this???
geeknerd99
02-03-2007, 20:48
Well, it certainly makes scouting a little bit easier for every match. :p
401 plays against 405 EVERY SINGLE ROUND!!!! Strangely enough, I'm not really noticing this when I drive though. Then again, we're playing mostly defense right now.
ggoldman
02-03-2007, 20:54
Every team in the pits is paired against the team directly next to them (not across the isle).
It is very ironic, because when 401 first got there, we helped repair what turned out to be our perpetual opponent.
I am glad that we could help out their team, but would appreciate more variation in the matching.
A little birdie from the higher ups told me they are working to fix it for the other regionals.
Same problem at the Pacific Northwest regional. 948 vs 949 in every match. 272 vs 360 in every match. And several others whose numbers I've forgotten.
Several of the teams reported the problem to the staff as soon as the pairings were distributed. They said they were looking into it and might be redoing the pairings. We checked back a bit later, and they said that the official word from FIRST was that nothing could be changed.
We are very disappointed, even though this mess-up gave our team an advantage.
rocknthehawk
02-03-2007, 21:29
Today at BAE, team 549 played team 562 all 7 matches of the day. Also, we played with a team, and then would play against them the next match, then pair with them later again.
Also, this terrible pairing system left teams wondering the capabilities of our robot, because they never got to even TRY and play. We practiced yesterday with many of the teams we played with today...
It was no fun to play with/against the same teams all day.Strategy turned to mush, because we were with and against the same teams all day. :(
Andrew Blair
02-03-2007, 21:36
Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, Dave. What FIRST actually told me is that this is the way the algorithm is supposed to generate matches, and there is no means to vary the match-ups. So the intent seems to be that low numbered teams will alternate playing each other. I was told this is not a defect in the system; matches come out that way because that is the algorithm that FIRST specified.
Several people who have been recognized as sources of inspiration to the FIRST community have told me that this match generation system seems unfair, and I concur. I understand that these feelings will be communicated in a respectful manner to the appropriate people at FIRST, probably within the next few days.
On a related note, the scoring system worked flawlessly today at St. Louis -- no crashes, no restarts, no lost data, no delays. We finished about four minutes ahead of schedule, and the only (relatively minor) problems encountered were due to human error.
From Richard's post in this thread (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49438&page=6), it seems that FIRST has spec'd out an algorithm that places similarly numbered teams in matches together. I suppose it could be an attempt to even the playing field for rookies. Sorry to spread around your post Richard, but this is an interesting and, I think, rather unfortunate change in direction.
We'll be against 291 for two entire regionals...:(
EDIT: Well, I think Richard's information is correct, based on the ten's of posts on here, from every regional, saying that they're paired up with the same people throughout. The question is, is there anything good about it, and if not, should we do anything to change it? Can we even change it?
Scott Carpman
02-03-2007, 21:37
We've played Team 1089 all 5 matches today and we also have the problem with playin in match 9, 19, 29, etc.
Ian Curtis
02-03-2007, 21:45
One more fun fact. At BAE we have 2 teams which need to play another round to get to 8 rounds per team. As such, 4 (or at least 3) extra rounds have been scheduled, giving 22 (or 16) teams an extra round of practice.
Sean Marks
02-03-2007, 21:49
Yea, we have noticed this in the past 2 days. Team have been playing either with against each other for 2 or more matches. I feel it just doesnt show how you will compete with others. It's still a lot of fun though. :yikes:
Richard Wallace
02-03-2007, 21:50
... Sorry to spread around your post Richard, but this is an interesting and, I think, rather unfortunate change in direction...I don't mind you spreading it around.
I'd like to repeat here that the new field management system worked flawlessly in St. Louis today. Credit for that should go to FIRST engineering staff and the new contractors for great attention to the details, to Mark Koors of FRC45 (technical advisor) and Jerry Budd of FRC461 (scoring lead), and to several members of the local St. Louis volunteer corps for tirelessly testing and retesting the system on Wednesday and Thursday, before the fun started this morning. This system is a major improvement over last year.
As I said earlier, I will add my concurrence to the communication being prepared for FIRST regarding the match generation algorithm; however, to me it seems clear that this is a policy issue and not a defect in the field management system. Let's keep the discussion on this topic focussed on what can/should be done to improve match generation.
From Richard's post in this thread (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49438&page=6), it seems that FIRST has spec'd out an algorithm that places similarly numbered teams in matches together. I suppose it could be an attempt to even the playing field for rookies. Sorry to spread around your post Richard, but this is an interesting and, I think, rather unfortunate change in direction.
We'll be against 291 for two entire regionals...:(
EDIT: Well, I think Richard's information is correct, based on the ten's of posts on here, from every regional, saying that they're paired up with the same people throughout. The question is, is there anything good about it, and if not, should we do anything to change it? Can we even change it?
I-- can't believe this is how they WANTED the match schedule to be!
What!?
Oh boy...
I hope this just gets redone, rather than rationalized into a "good thing."
Pavan Dave
02-03-2007, 22:01
I see this as a good and a bad thing. Although I do not like the fact that you are against the same people over and over, I bet FIRST or someone can create an algorithm that can at least make the first half of the teams compete with only first half teams and second half teams only second half with a few inter lapped but I think that Rookies vs Rookies rather than Veterans vs Rookies is a great idea because Vets, no matter if they are rookies on the team, have a higher chance of winning because the team has had the experience compared to the Rookie teams.
I'm not 100% for it, but im not 100% against it either. I guess its a step in the right direction....Maybe a diagonal step, but forward nonetheless.
Billfred
02-03-2007, 22:03
As I said earlier, I will add my concurrence to the communication being prepared for FIRST regarding the match generation algorithm; however, to me it seems clear that this is a policy issue and not a defect in the field management system. Let's keep the discussion on this topic focussed on what can/should be done to improve match generation.
How to improve it? A few thoughts:
-Make sure the cycles are flipped around after each period of play (Friday AM, Friday PM, Saturday AM). Being the last match before lunch and the first one after is a little tight, but the Friday-Saturday interlude is the perfect time to shuffle the deck.
-d.courtney's notion of a ten-minute break (a little under two match cycles) may also aid in shuffling things nicely, if doing it at the existing breaks doesn't cut it.
-If you absolutely must stick the same two teams in a second match, make sure they don't end up on the same side again.
-Above all else, remain fully aware that a low number (or lack thereof) is by no means a sure measure of a great robot.
Your mileage, of course, may vary.
Nuttyman54
02-03-2007, 22:03
The fact that some teams are always against each other worries me. Forget the fact that its the same general group of teams playing each round, but the fact that 190 has played 4 matches AGAINST 175 and NONE with them is a problem. It shouldn't be that hard to make a way to manually swap two of the teams in a match to make that happen.
I also agree that there is an issue with the grouping effect. In years past it has happened to some degree (an effect of the attempt to space matches evenly), but never to this extreme. I have no problem with teams not getting to play in a match with 2 or 3 of the teams, but more than 10 is a little obscene. I have heard good news that FIRST has gotten the message and that they will fix it for the next regionals.
On that note, week 1 regionals have always been the proving grounds for the game and all the associated software. I'm glad that this is the only issue i've seen so far
Andrew Blair
02-03-2007, 22:12
Ok, I did a random selection of teams from different regionals, and just checked how often they played against a particular team. Results may not be complete, but they give a pretty good spread.
St. Louis:
148- 4/7 matches against 45, 3/7 against 217
829- 4/7 matches against 547
1502- 7/7 matches against 1472
2177- 4/7 against 2167, 3/7 against 2219
VCU:
116- 7/7 matches against 122
401- 6/6 matches against 405
900- 3/6 matches against 843
2028- 6/6 matches against 2021
You could go into far greater detail, analyzing alliance partners, ratio of matches with vs. against , whatever, but there really isn't much point. The scoring algorithm, as has been stated, is grouping particular team number together, and is doing so consistently. There wasn't a team I found that wasn't playing with the same team (for or against), at least half the time. To be honest, and nothing bad directed or intended, but it kinda explains why there are so may rookies in the top 8 this year.
St. Louis:
#4- 2177
VCU:
#7- 2068
#8- 2028
PNR:
#1- 2122
NJ:
#5- 2180
There are always really good rookies, but there seems to be a disproportionate amount this year, IMHO. I can't say I'm right here though.
Jonathan Norris
02-03-2007, 22:15
We were with or against 663 at BAE for every match today... and seemed to play with the same group of team the whole day. I call not so random...
Richard Wallace
02-03-2007, 22:20
One way to argue this is as follows: seeding is meaningless, scouting should determine your alliance selection for eliminations. So the purpose of qualifying matches is not to generate seedings that accurately reflect team strength (major league baseball uses 162 games to do that, and still creates lopsided playoff match-ups); qualifying matches give scouts information about what each team can do, and for that purpose the match-ups are not a significant factor.
JaneYoung
02-03-2007, 22:24
I guess its a step in the right direction....Maybe a diagonal step, but forward nonetheless.
Are you on 118? :D
Andrew Blair
02-03-2007, 22:25
One way to argue this is as follows: seeding is meaningless, scouting should determine your alliance selection for eliminations. So the purpose of qualifying matches is not to generate seedings that accurately reflect team strength (major league baseball uses 162 games to do that, and still creates lopsided playoff match-ups); qualifying matches give scouts information about what each team can do, and for that purpose the match-ups are not a significant factor.
I'd love to look at it this way, but unfortunately, it doesn't really work out well. If you are constantly playing a powerhouse team, your strategy, in order to try and win, must adapt into, likely, a defensive stance, even though you may be an amazing offensive robot.
Teams scout, but match standing can lend alot of weight to whether or not a team gets picked. Unfortunate, but real. That may be FIRST's argument though, you are right Richard.
Zach Purser
02-03-2007, 22:26
Add to your VCU list that 435 played against 510 every round. I could probably double your list of reasons that the current matching system is a bad idea, but if FIRST is already planning a change then I won't bother.
Can anyone confirm that FIRST is changing this for the next round of regionals and for nationals?
Nobody has posted a similiar situation to the one on my team (2108 in VCU); we face off against 2186 every match, but also, our ally in one match is one of our competitors in the next.
For instance: Match number #11, our allies were 617 and 1413 (I believe). Match #21, we went up against 1413.
It's a cascading cycle where we basically only see three new robots on the field at any given match: 2 new allies, and 2 familiar on the opposition.
Has anybody else seen or have had this happen with other teams?
One way to argue this is as follows: seeding is meaningless, scouting should determine your alliance selection for eliminations. So the purpose of qualifying matches is not to generate seedings that accurately reflect team strength (major league baseball uses 162 games to do that, and still creates lopsided playoff match-ups); qualifying matches give scouts information about what each team can do, and for that purpose the match-ups are not a significant factor.
Richard,
For once I have to disagree with you. Yes, scouting should determine your alliance section, but seeding is not meaningless. The reason qualifying matches need to reflect team strength is to ensure that the teams who earn the right to select, are deserving to do so. No one wants to see a below average team seed #1, by virtue of constantly playing even weaker teams, or being paired with excellent teams. This unfairly rewards them, and punishes the team they select. (Provided that this below average team scouts well, and picks a top team)
burkey_turkey
02-03-2007, 22:36
seeding is meaningless, scouting should determine your alliance selection for eliminations.
yes, i agree that of course the seeding doesnt reflect the actual rank of the robots acurately and scouting should determine who goes in the alliances, but the ranking does determine who gets to choose the alliances. Because there are some teams out there, i will not name any specifically but we all know about them, who just build a boxbot and run around doing alot of nothing, they will have a team that always plays them and always wins because they are basically playing 3 v 2. even if the robot isn't that great, it wins every match and gets placed up top where it is made to choose an alliance. this robot might not be one of the best 24 teams and might not be worthy of its spot.
One other thing relating the perpetual opponents to alliance captains is, it is impossible for both teams to be alliance captains. Your record is the inverse of your perpetual opponents record. you cannot possibly both be alliance partners, which is unfair to two really great and worthy teams who just so happen to be numerically close.
my team, we play every match against the same team. the bad thing is that the one downside of our robot is its traction. we have omniwheels and they arent gripping well. all of our opponents mechanisms arent functional so they have to focus on defense. we keep getting alliance partners that cant tube like we can so our opponent just slams us every time we pick up a tube. by the 5th match however, they received a yellow card (if not the first at the regional then definitely the second) for excessive violence. now we play an unagressive/paranoid partner for the rest of the matches which is too much in our advantage in my opinion.
while i see what FIRST is trying to do, i really think that a purely random schedule would be the best, getting paired with whoever you get paired with, assuring the variety you expect.
Richard Wallace
02-03-2007, 22:48
For once I have to disagree with you. Yes, scouting should determine your alliance section, but seeding is not meaningless. The reason qualifying matches need to reflect team strength is to ensure that the teams who earn the right to select, are deserving to do so. No one wants to see a below average team seed #1, by virtue of constantly playing even weaker teams, or being paired with excellent teams. This unfairly rewards them, and punishes the team they select. (Provided that this below average team scouts well, and picks a top team)I don't mind if you disagree with me, Karthik. I'm not certain that I agree with me on this reasoning, either.
Kevin Sevcik
02-03-2007, 22:54
I'll have to agree with Karthik. The seeding is very important for ranking atleast the top 8 teams. A veteran #2 seed that has played and beaten all the other veteran teams at the regional with a rookie #1 seed that has barely beaten all the other rookies at the regional... That's just asking for trouble.
In addition, I can't see how a rookie team would prefer to be paired with and against other rookies for an entire regional. Many of these rookies were planning on being enabling robots to leverage the ramps and other features of veteran teams. Basically telling them that they'll never be paired with a veteran team just because is not a nice thing to do.
Mostly, I'm just surprised because the only serious complaints I've ever heard about the alliance pairing algorithms were that teams had to play with or against another team for half a regional or so. I can't really understand why first would turn around and go with a system like this in the face of that feedback.
All this discussion about Richards idea that this type of seeding rounds was a new approach by FIRST to level the playing, or that this was planned by FIRST, is simply wrong. When this happened at the scrimmage in Suffield, CT 2 weeks ago, it was discussed with 3 high level people from FIRST.They all agreed that what happen that day, and whats happening this weekend, would be corrected by the 1st week events. With all the other fixes that came out of the scrimmage, I guess they ran out of time.
By continuing this line of discussion you are giving FIRST, and the software people an excuse for not fixing something that needs fixing.
Has anyone else notice that Mr Lavery his not added his voice to this discussion. Last year he was all over Hatch for every little issue.
Jack Jones
02-03-2007, 22:58
I don’t think they should even try to fix it. Why should the first week teams have to be the guinea pigs? Why should teams attending only the first week events end up having a less rewarding experience than ones who picked week four or five? This is an issue that could have been resolved way before the first event. I’m reminded of last year’s first week debacle with the scoring system and automatic scoring hardware. Not much changed in five weeks. Milwaukee probably had as many or more re-starts than VCU. They were still human counting in Las Vegas. It was not until the Championship that they programmed a break after autonomous - so they could at least get the autonomous winner right! Not much changed, except that we learned to live with it and made the best of it.
But last year had a really great game to make up for the warts. IMO, this year’s game is not as good, not even close. Whether the total experience is enough to make up for [insert pet peeve(s) here] remains to bee seen.
The biggest problem I see with the perpetual opponent is simply the issue of an actually enemy appearing. In previous years there have been slight rivalries etc but by having a team that you play over and over ruins the atmosphere that we, or at least I love about FIRST regionals, a team could be your enemy one round then your ally the next. Without that I think teams can begin to get bitter towards each other, and whatever team ends up playing the number one team every match ends up being last just because of that it really adds too much negative competition into the game.
burkey_turkey
02-03-2007, 23:04
Why should teams attending only the first week events end up having a less rewarding experience than ones who picked week four or five?
I personally think instead of having a 'if i cant have it nobody can' attitude one should have a 'well, at least everyone else will have fun' attitude. The people in the first week got the short straw, yes. but this cannot be changed; it already happened. i would hope that first will learn from its mistake immediately and try and make it so everyone else has the best experiance they can.
Jack Jones
02-03-2007, 23:12
I personally think instead of having a 'if i cant have it nobody can' attitude one should have a 'well, at least everyone else will have fun' attitude. The people in the first week got the short straw, yes. but this cannot be changed; it already happened. i would hope that first will learn from its mistake immediately and try and make it so everyone else has the best experiance they can.
You sir, are putting attitudes in my mouth.
This is something that I think should really change. I don't want to sound like I'm whining, but this happened to team 494 at Milwaukee last season when we had to play 111 in several of our matches (6-7 in qualifying), it was not that we don't love playing against WildStang, more we just hate losing to them every round. Really my point is that it is fun to play against/with great teams every once in a while, but I would much rather play with several different teams so we can rekindle friendships and create new ones.
It scares me at Great Lakes, because I know we will be put against 469 and 503 in every single match we play. This would probably lead to me quiting FIRST and hiding in a hole to cry the pain of losing all these matches away. And yes I'm being sarcastic
Michael Hill
03-03-2007, 00:40
St. Louis:
1646 vs. 1098 7 times in a row out of 9
Idaman323
03-03-2007, 00:51
Well, I definatly noticed this. Being on the loosing alliance about 5 times in a row is not fun... Dropped from 8th to 39th. But... it's over, only one more match left before we go home. Unless of course we are in the finals... but 39th is not good when other teams are scouting.. BUT, not much you can do.
Hopefully they will maybe do something about this for the next weeks to come. Just gotta say... right now, in my eyes, those ranks are pretty inaccurate.
GOOD LUCK TO EVERYBODY TOMORROW!!!!!!
AdamHeard
03-03-2007, 01:17
I hope this gets fixed by next week....
otherwise we will be up against 254 or 330 every match!!!!:ahh:
Wow, I came into this thread expecting similar gripes of "ooo, our (n+1)th match had somewhat similar robots as our nth match" as there was last year, but this is horrible if teams are really getting 60%+ matches against the same teams.
In past years it was always kinda like
match 1: paired with team x
match 2: playing against team x
match 3: playing after a match that had team x
Teams would kind of 'fade in' to your matches over the course of the day, then 'fade out'.
The worst part is that this isn't even something that could possibly be called an unforeseen bug, since you can always just generate test regionals with dummy teams and see if the results are sane.
I suppose one upside is that if everyone is playing their own little sub-regional with the same subset of the robots AT that regional, then finals will more closely resemble finals at the championship: you'll be playing against robots you've never played against before, and scouting is that much more important.
sanddrag
03-03-2007, 02:04
I've said something similar to the following before, I'll say it again.
We are customers of FIRST.
And, I'm not sure the service FIRST is providing with this method of pairups is what the customers ordered.
I'm hoping for much more varied pairups for week two.
Without formally polling them, I am confident that "my" team (1885 at VCU) as a whole strongly dislikes the current approach to assigning teams to matches.
When I had to set-up match pairings recent for a Potomac Vex League scrimmage, I sweated my way through this subject for one long night and came up with a handcrafted schedule that spread things out evenly in time; and ensured that over 6 rounds, no team ever faced the same pair of opponents and never had the same ally. Once I did this for my 20 hypothetical teams, I randomly assigned the 20 real team numbers to the hyothetical teams and was done.
It was tedious to do this for the twenty teams coming to that scrimmage, and out of ignorance I probably made the job harder than it needed to be, but (here comes the punch line of this part of this message) I absolutely know that I could automate the process; and that it will not be all that hard to generalize and automate my process (or a better one).
So.... By the time we get to the Las Vegas Regional, I certainly hope that this week's experiment is in the dustbin of history. I hope that FIRST chooses to go back to something that is blind to any prejudices about team age or ability needing to be factored into the scheduling method.
I say this because I am willing to trust that over a 6 to 8 match set of regional qualifying rounds a regoinal's participants can get an accurate-enough assessment of team abilities to be confident that the highly seeded teams are generally where they should be and that all the teams have generally gotten an adequate opportunity to strut their stuff.
Blake
PS: Perhaps the story within the story here is this question... Should the match scheduling algorithm (described in layman's terms) be part of the published rules, so that we can all point out that discontent is high before the season's matches start?
Lifelessimp
03-03-2007, 05:29
In my opinion, this schedule kind of sucks. We've had to play 114 (Los Altos) the whole day (6/6 matches), which isn't terrible, but it's nice to get to play against a lot more robots. At the same time, we haven't gotten to play on the same side as 114. Not to take anything away from 114, but our robot has had a lot of problems, which may have inflated 114's score to some degree. Basically, when you have these perpetual opponents, you don't get an accurate measurement of how good a robot is. Instead, you get a composite of how good your robot is plus how bad the other team's robot is.
AcesPease
03-03-2007, 06:02
One way to argue this is as follows: seeding is meaningless, scouting should determine your alliance selection for eliminations. So the purpose of qualifying matches is not to generate seedings that accurately reflect team strength (major league baseball uses 162 games to do that, and still creates lopsided playoff match-ups); qualifying matches give scouts information about what each team can do, and for that purpose the match-ups are not a significant factor.
Seeding is meaningless, but having no variety at all in the qualification play is like only having one qualification round. Did we pay $6000 to play a mini event with only 5 other teams?
Please note that this problem was seen and pointed out BEFORE these regionals.
This seeding in unimaginative and damaging to the spirit of the game. If it is the result of someone's "policy" they should take a close look at what they have created. From what I am hearing here it is damaging the experience of many teams this weekend and should be changed for TODAY'S matches.
RoboMadi
03-03-2007, 06:37
I carry a really 'mix' opinion on this issue. May be for some teams going against the powerhouse teams; its going to be a big issue, while for others it might sound right.
For my own personal experience, it has showed kids (especially our team) the spirit of GP. 612 is going against 611 in every single match. Their pit is right beside us. Even though both teams are going against eachother in every single round, they've been helping eachother throughout the competion. This example emobodies the true meaning of FIRST, Gracious Professionalism.
Imad
Has FIRST missed the mark? Part or the excitement to watch as a mentor is how the kids learn to stratagize with and against almost every team at a regional. While the mix for who you are paired with seems fairly random, having one team that you are always against is bad. Other than really getting to know that team very well and being able to easy tell your new alliance partners how to defend against them I don't see it having much benefit. I much prefer an offensive match and this looks like it will breed defensive matches. From what I have seen, simply pushing a robot around near the rack makes scoring ringers almost impossible. Veteran vs veteran and rookie vs rookie, what's up with that? There have been extremely competitive rookies and veteran teams that have had less than impressive years. All beit, a few power houses can always be counted on. Speaking of that, how many teams are looking at the teams attending thier own regionals today to see who they will be paired against. I know I did. First two listed vs eachother, Second two vs. eachother (At least that is how it goes at VCU)? The more random the better. You should be able to test your skills with and against as many teams as possible. This just doesn't measure up.
EDIT: I looked at the information available from NJ, STL, PNW, VCU. No match results were up for BAE. At PNW and VCU it looks like the first two teams listed are vs. each other every match. At NJ and STL it looks like the first two teams listed are vs. eachother every other match. I/We should all know more once today's matches are posted and when/if anyone has time to analize all the information.
Travis Hoffman
03-03-2007, 08:40
I don’t think they should even try to fix it. Why should the first week teams have to be the guinea pigs? Why should teams attending only the first week events end up having a less rewarding experience than ones who picked week four or five?
Company X just started selling their 2000SUX sport utility vehicle. The first thousand SUX's on the road have airbags that deploy when the radio is tuned to 107.9 MHz, causing major accidents and injuries to the vehicle occupants. There is a public outcry calling for Company X to issue a recall and fix the problem IMMEDIATELY. The Company X CEO, nose firmly jammed north of horizontal, issues a statement declaring, "Oh, sorry, it wouldn't be fair for the first 1000 buyers if we fixed the problem for everyone else. You're just going to have to live with it blah blah blah blah blah......"
I'm pretty sure the first 1000 buyers would be more appreciative of Company X AND WOULD MORE LIKELY CHOOSE TO BE REPEAT CUSTOMERS if Company X admitted the problem and did everything they could to repair the defect.
Jack, I certainly hope FIRST doesn't follow Company X's lead. I expect them to be proactive. If they can't figure out a solution to this problem, then I'd hope they are willing to keep an open mind and consider outside algorithms brought to them by established members of the FIRST community, pride or contractual obligations or whatever be durned. Otherwise, I'd fear a significant increase in the risk of their "customers" taking their business elsewhere.
This is a major problem - a "design flaw". Let's correct the problem so our customers are more satisfied with the product.
Oh boy, hard numbers!
I wrote a C program to crunch the numbers of teams that teams played with or against at the first day of various regionals.
NASA/VCU Regional
S = set of teams that a given team played with or against
P = set of teams that a given team played against
A = set of teams that a given team played with
There were 66 teams at this regional
Team Games |S| |P| |A|
116 7 23 15 15
122 7 23 15 15
339 7 23 15 15
343 7 23 15 15
345 8 23 15 15
346 8 23 15 15
384 6 20 13 13
393 6 20 13 13
401 6 20 13 13
405 6 20 13 13
414 6 20 13 13
422 6 20 13 13
435 6 20 13 13
510 6 20 13 13
539 6 20 13 13
540 6 20 13 13
587 6 20 13 13
600 6 20 13 13
611 6 20 13 13
612 6 20 13 13
617 6 20 13 13
619 6 20 13 13
620 6 16 14 13
623 6 16 14 13
638 6 16 14 13
843 6 16 14 13
900 6 16 14 13
928 6 16 14 13
975 7 18 16 15
1002 7 18 16 15
1033 7 18 16 15
1054 7 18 16 15
1086 8 18 16 15
1093 8 18 16 15
1095 6 16 14 13
1123 6 16 14 13
1137 6 16 14 13
1172 6 16 14 13
1184 6 16 14 13
1222 6 16 14 13
1236 6 16 14 13
1262 6 16 14 13
1413 6 16 14 13
1522 6 16 14 13
1541 6 20 13 13
1598 6 20 13 13
1599 6 20 13 13
1610 6 20 13 13
1655 6 20 13 13
1731 6 20 13 13
1748 6 20 13 13
1793 6 20 13 13
1829 6 20 13 13
1830 6 20 13 13
1885 6 20 13 13
1895 6 20 13 13
1907 7 23 15 15
1908 7 23 15 15
2021 7 23 15 15
2028 7 23 15 15
2068 8 23 15 15
2074 8 23 15 15
2106 6 20 13 13
2107 6 20 13 13
2108 6 20 13 13
2186 6 20 13 13
New Jersey Regional
S = set of teams that a given team played with or against
P = set of teams that a given team played against
A = set of teams that a given team played with
There were 59 teams at this regional
Team Games |S| |P| |A|
11 7 21 14 15
25 7 20 14 15
41 7 20 14 15
75 7 20 14 15
88 7 20 14 15
102 7 21 14 15
103 7 21 13 15
136 7 21 13 15
165 7 21 13 15
177 7 21 13 15
219 7 21 13 15
223 7 21 13 15
224 8 21 13 15
237 8 21 13 15
293 6 19 11 13
303 6 18 12 13
341 6 19 11 13
359 6 18 12 13
375 6 19 11 13
381 7 23 15 15
486 7 23 15 15
522 7 23 15 15
550 7 23 15 15
555 7 23 15 15
613 7 23 15 15
637 8 23 15 15
694 8 23 15 15
708 6 20 13 13
714 6 20 13 13
716 6 20 13 13
816 6 20 13 13
834 6 20 13 13
836 6 20 13 13
869 6 20 13 13
1048 6 20 13 13
1089 6 20 13 13
1155 6 20 13 13
1218 6 20 13 13
1279 6 20 13 13
1302 7 27 13 15
1367 7 26 14 15
1391 7 27 13 15
1403 7 27 13 15
1495 8 26 14 15
1547 8 27 13 15
1617 6 24 12 13
1672 6 22 12 13
1676 6 24 12 13
1689 6 23 11 13
1727 6 23 13 13
1807 6 23 11 13
1811 6 24 12 13
1881 6 22 12 13
1882 6 24 12 13
1923 6 23 11 13
2016 6 24 12 13
2140 6 23 11 13
2180 7 27 13 15
2191 7 27 13 15
St Louis Regional
S = set of teams that a given team played with or against
P = set of teams that a given team played against
A = set of teams that a given team played with
There were 45 teams at this regional
Team Games |S| |P| |A|
45 7 25 14 15
148 8 21 13 15
217 8 21 13 15
292 7 21 13 15
461 7 21 13 15
525 7 21 13 15
547 7 21 13 15
829 7 21 13 15
830 7 21 13 15
868 7 21 13 15
888 7 21 13 15
931 7 21 13 15
939 6 17 11 13
967 6 20 12 13
1094 6 21 12 13
1098 7 18 15 15
1178 7 21 15 15
1182 8 18 14 15
1208 7 19 13 13
1250 6 16 13 13
1288 6 16 13 13
1315 7 17 15 15
1329 7 17 15 15
1444 7 17 15 15
1451 7 17 15 15
1472 7 17 15 15
1502 7 17 15 15
1602 7 17 15 15
1625 7 17 15 15
1646 7 18 15 15
1658 7 23 14 15
1706 7 20 12 15
1723 7 24 14 15
1747 8 21 13 15
1752 8 23 13 15
1769 7 20 12 15
1939 7 24 14 15
1985 7 21 13 15
1986 7 23 13 15
2011 6 19 12 13
2014 6 21 13 13
2133 6 17 11 13
2167 7 21 13 15
2177 7 21 13 15
2219 7 22 14 15
Interpretation
First column is how many games a team played.
Second column (|S|) is how many teams that team played either with or against. Obviously P and A are subsets of this.
Third column is how many teams a given team played AGAINST. So this is the size of the set that ALL their opponents were chosen from.
Fourth column is how many teams a given team played WITH. So this is the size of the set that ALL their alliance partners were chosen from.
You can see how a small size in either P or A might be problematic. If a team has a small pool to draw partners or opponents from, it is easy for that pool to be full of very good or very poor teams, thus throwing off that particular team's rankings.
Edit: See my post a few posts down for some stats from 2006. In general, teams did play with a wider variety back then.
I agree with Travis - fix the problem or consider reducing the # of seeding matches to 3.
How is the strength/true seeding of a team is to be measured without variation of the opponents, the true strengths and weakness will not be validated via competition.
Weaker teams beating even weaker teams do not provide a true ranking. If that is what is intended (for any reason) - than just eliminate the seeding rankings and randomly select the #1 though #8 seeds after the pre-elimination matches. The resultant will just about match what is going to occur using the current method.
Besides, how many times does it take to demoralize the losing team, particularly if the robot capabilities and strategy isn't significantly changed from match to match.
Whats next? Requiring different drivers for every match?? After all, if the robot and strategy doesn't change from match to match - the only way to get any kind of variation is to swap out drivers, with varying capability.
I hope FIRST fixes the problem soon.
Mike
And now, I have analyzed the schedule for the first day at NASA/VCU from 2006.
Let's just get to the point:
Conclusion (tentative, the algorithm might switch it up on day 2):
The set of teams a team could expect to play with or against at NASA/VCU last year was much larger. On average, a 2006 team could expect to play with or against 27 teams in the first day of the regional. In the 2007 regional, a team could expect to play with or against 18 teams.
However, the larger set of teams from 2006 was split up interestingly. A 2006team could expect to see their opponents each match come from a pool of 16.5 teams, while their allies came from a pool of 12.0 teams. In 2007, opponents come from a pool of 13.5 teams, and allies from from a pool of 13.5 teams. So a 2007 team actually has more variety in allies than in 2006, but much less variety in opponents.
And here is the raw stats from the first day of the NASA/VCU regional in 2006.
S = set of teams that a given team played with or against
P = set of teams that a given team played against
A = set of teams that a given team played with
There were 64 teams at this regional
Team Games |S| |P| |A|
116 6 29 17 13
122 5 25 15 11
165 5 25 15 11
222 5 25 15 11
339 5 25 15 11
343 5 25 15 11
345 6 30 18 13
346 5 25 15 11
384 6 29 17 13
388 6 30 18 13
401 6 29 18 13
405 5 25 15 11
414 6 30 18 13
416 6 29 18 13
422 6 30 18 13
435 5 25 15 11
447 6 29 17 13
510 5 25 15 11
539 5 25 15 11
540 6 30 18 13
587 6 30 18 13
600 5 25 15 11
611 6 30 18 13
612 6 30 18 13
617 6 30 18 13
619 6 30 18 13
620 5 25 15 11
623 6 29 17 13
638 7 33 21 14
804 5 25 15 11
843 5 25 15 11
926 5 25 15 11
928 5 25 15 11
975 6 30 18 13
977 6 30 18 13
1002 5 25 15 11
1033 6 30 18 13
1054 6 30 18 13
1086 6 30 18 13
1093 6 29 17 13
1095 6 30 18 13
1132 6 30 18 13
1137 5 25 15 11
1172 5 25 15 11
1184 5 25 15 11
1222 5 25 15 11
1236 6 30 18 13
1262 6 29 18 13
1413 5 25 15 11
1467 5 25 15 11
1522 5 25 15 11
1541 6 30 18 13
1598 5 25 15 11
1599 5 25 15 11
1610 7 33 20 14
1715 6 30 18 13
1731 5 25 15 11
1793 5 25 15 11
1829 6 30 18 13
1830 6 30 18 13
1871 5 25 15 11
1885 5 25 15 11
1907 5 25 15 11
1908 5 25 15 11
We (1279) played against 1218 every match in NJ. (100%) Very non-random, and I hope this is corrected.
I could see how this whole thing was a plan by FIRST to make the competition a little less harsh to newer teams. However, as a few people have already mentioned, team number is not a measure of how good a robot will be. Hence, the plan backfired.
I think the problem needs to be fixed for the coming week's regionals, if nothing else go back to last year's system.
Can ANYONE confirm or deny a plan to change the system for the coming weeks, has anyone been told anything?
artdutra04
03-03-2007, 19:59
IMHO, a team's number should not have ANY impact on the seeding of the teams, as there are exceptions to the rule. Relying on team number alone is a very poor method of randomly seeding matches, as although there might be a slight trend towards lower number teams as better teams, "picking and choosing" your data to randomly sample a population creates biased results.
It's like asking everyone who's standing outside a building if they smoke, to try to ascertain the number of people who smoke in a company. Your data is obviously going to be biased.
So to solve this problem, we need to go back to elementary statistics and what they have to say about randomness. What we want is a match schedule that "mixes teams up", while still allowing for a minimum time span between matches. To do that, we will need a normally distributed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution) match schedule.
Here's a quick sketch I made to illustrate the idea:
http://adutra.team228.org/images/normal-distribution-matches.png
Of course I picked 1 hour as the mean and 15 minutes as the standard deviation, but that data can be changed as necessary. Increasing the mean would allow for greater separated matches, while increasing the standard deviation would also allow more "mixing up" of the matches, but at the sacrifice of some of the minimum timespan between matches.
And of course the real algorithm would have to take into account more variables than this, but this is just a concept. ;)
Psychoflood
03-03-2007, 20:24
we played 25 in at least half of our matches today. IMHO, i was very entertained by the eliminations at the regional, they were some very intense matches so i'm not complaining, but it seemed to me that they put a low number with a mid-ish number, and a rookie team/high number (<2000) I don't see how you can expect a fair and or "random" match from the same groups/sets of teams based on the teams number and not their robots specific ability/skill/efficiency this year
mtaman02
03-03-2007, 20:33
Yeah I noticed that the matches were not quite random at NJ. My old team went up against another team all day Friday and Saturday. As far as Time in between matches, my old team went up every 10 - 12 matches which is probably almost 30 minutes (or more) if you count all of the field resets in between and 1 - 5 minor scoring table or robot technacalities - for the most part we were resetting the matches about 5 minutes every round (which isn't too bad) The Teams were very patient & I did not recieve any complaints about the matches not being random enough. I don't think the Match Generation System can be fixed while the software is out on the road traveling to about 4 - 5 regionals but I guess is FIRST has a private internet line I guess they (the Scoring Table) can d/l any updates to the System. The world may never know. :confused:
FourPenguins
03-03-2007, 21:16
Yet another MORT member heard from. (Sorry guys, but we did get hosed.)
I think I understand the intent of this system. The belief (misguided though it is) was that by pairing a rookie with an experienced team, the rookies would be able to advance, making the competitions more "fair" to rookie teams.
Now, this system is based on two assumptions. The first is that a team's age and its robot's abilities are inversely proportional. This isn't always true, as our rookie all-stars prove every year. The second assumption was that rookies deserve a better shot at winning than experienced teams. Coming from an experienced team, I may be biased, but with three "rookie-only" awards, do we also need to skew the qualification matches to "help" rookies?
Sorry if I'm stepping on any toes, but this looks a bit like they're stacking it to me. I'd much prefer true randomized pairings, and let everyone rise or fall on their own merit, not their perpetual teammate/opponent's.
Pavan Dave
03-03-2007, 21:42
Are you on 118? :D
Yes, my comments in no way, shape, or form represent Team 118, in any fashion and are solely the views of me.
What I meant:
To explain what I mean is that I believe it is more fair for the rookies to kind of have a fair chance at the Finals by having them compete more with rookies rather than veterans. I think that the matches should be 60% Vet vs Vet||Rooks vs Rooks, and that the other 40% should be a combination of integration.
But for it to fit their algorithm of the time between matches they would have to be similar to this:
(Odd = Veteran Team; Even = Rookie Team)
Match 1: 1,3,5,7,9,11
Match 2: 2,4,6,8,10,12
Match 3: 13,15,17,19,21,23
Match 5: 14,16,18,20,22,24
(Few matches later)
Match 7: 1,2,13,4,8,10
et cetera.
That is just how I feel it would be more fair because that way rookies would have a more fair chance of getting to the top 8 seeds.
Now some of you say well, the vets will kill the rooks, but if you think about it, you will have usually 4 vets and 4 rookies or 5 vets and 3 rookies or even 3 vets and 5 rookies at the final 8 before they pick their teams and after they pick they will probably be around one or two veterans per team to (naturally) balance things out.
Pavan.
While the idea of trying to give rookies a leg up is a really nice thing to do I'm not sure if it is really fair. If the system is setup so that there is adequate time in between the teams should be playing a random set of teams. If a rookie robot is good then it will seed high just like any other good bot. Messing with the deck and stacking it even for the weaker players doesn't help make people feel better about the results.
JaneYoung
03-03-2007, 21:52
Are you on 118? :D
Side comment:
Pavan, what I meant by that was that 118's robot(s) can go in any direction beautifully and it seems that your thoughts can as well. 'Diagonal step forward' is a great way to express a thought and sounds like 118 movement. :)
Sorry for the confusion.
Jane
Keith Watson
03-03-2007, 23:13
I recommend that someone write a short program which takes a look at the ranking after the "seeding rounds" take place. Look at the top 10 teams, see if they had repeat opponents, and note the final rank of those opponents.
Remember that rankings are very important to how alliances are chosen for the final rounds.
Does the data show a pattern?
I did this check by hand for the PNW Regional. (So my count may be slightly off.) There were 54 competitors.
Rank 1
- faced the same competitor 8 times who finished with a rank of 54
Rank 2
- faced the same competitor 4 times who finished with a rank of 32
- faced the same competitor 4 times who finished with a rank of 43
Rank 3
- faced the same competitor 8 times who finished with a rank of 52
Rank 4
- faced the same competitor 8 times who finished with a rank of 50
Rank 5
- faced the same competitor 4 times who finished with a rank of 18
- faced the same competitor 4 times who finished with a rank of 44
Rank 6
- faced the same competitor 8 times who finished with a rank of 51
Rank 7
- faced the same competitor 8 times who finished with a rank of 45
Rank 8
- faced the same competitor 8 times who finished with a rank of 46
Rank 9
- faced the same competitor 4 times who finished with a rank of 53
- faced the same competitor 4 times who finished with a rank of 33
- faced the same competitor 2 times who finished with a rank of 35
- faced the same competitor 2 times who finished with a rank of 49
Rank 10
- faced the same competitor 8 times who finished with a rank of 48
The PNW Regional data shows a pattern. Not to take away from every team who performed well, but is this really the "intended" outcome? Note that the rules clearly state the schedule cannot be changed after it is published.
2108 played 2186 every single match. I fell sorry for them because we only lost one match. 2106 played 2107 the whole time too. We did well though and we ended up winning. I never really expected to win but we did work hard.
eugenebrooks
04-03-2007, 01:02
I am going to have to be blunt about this. This must be fixed. Teams that work hard to field a robot and come to a competition will not accept this sort of scheduling, and should not. There are many highly skilled mentors involved in the FIRST program who understand random scheduling, while satisfying constraints, and who would happily turn out validated scheduling software for FIRST to use. Yes, I know that it is a hard problem, but it is a solvable one. The match scheduling should be based only on the index of the teams, (1-N) for the teams at the regional, should be random while satisfying the needed constraints on the schedule and should be blind to the team numbers. The index schedule for a given value of "N teams" at a regional need never change, only the task of randomly matching teams to the indicies needs to be done at the regional.
I recommend that someone write a short program which takes a look at the ranking after the "seeding rounds" take place. Look at the top 10 teams, see if they had repeat opponents, and note the final rank of those opponents.
Remember that rankings are very important to how alliances are chosen for the final rounds.
Does the data show a pattern?
I did this check by hand for the PNW Regional. (So my count may be slightly off.) There were 54 competitors.
Rank 1
- faced the same competitor 8 times who finished with a rank of 54
Rank 2
- faced the same competitor 4 times who finished with a rank of 32
- faced the same competitor 4 times who finished with a rank of 43
Rank 3
- faced the same competitor 8 times who finished with a rank of 52
Rank 4
- faced the same competitor 8 times who finished with a rank of 50
Rank 5
- faced the same competitor 4 times who finished with a rank of 18
- faced the same competitor 4 times who finished with a rank of 44
Rank 6
- faced the same competitor 8 times who finished with a rank of 51
Rank 7
- faced the same competitor 8 times who finished with a rank of 45
Rank 8
- faced the same competitor 8 times who finished with a rank of 46
Rank 9
- faced the same competitor 4 times who finished with a rank of 53
- faced the same competitor 4 times who finished with a rank of 33
- faced the same competitor 2 times who finished with a rank of 35
- faced the same competitor 2 times who finished with a rank of 49
Rank 10
- faced the same competitor 8 times who finished with a rank of 48
The PNW Regional data shows a pattern. Not to take away from every team who performed well, but is this really the "intended" outcome? Note that the rules clearly state the schedule cannot be changed after it is published.
For this amount of trouble, lets step away from algorithms and any other sort of computerized system, as any kind of solution is bound to result in patterns, which we want to avoid to have a fair game.
This is my solution, and a very simple one. For each regional FIRST should buy popsicle sticks for as many teams as are attending. If there are 48 teams for the SV regional, FIRST buys 48 popsicle sticks. Each stick will have one team number written on it. Then they are all placed into a corrugated cardboard box with a lid. You shake the box really hard for five seconds, and then open it. Without looking, a person picks out sticks three at a time, forming alliances. After all of the sticks have been picked and having recorded the alliances, all 48 sticks are placed back in the box and the process is repeated as many times as necessary.
For added effect I suggest that the choosing of alliances be done in plain view of all of the teams. This will generate a lot of excitement as well as doing away with any doubt of having truly "random" match schedules.
(I think this is a realistic and fair way of chosing alliances.)
Adam Richards
04-03-2007, 01:36
How long would it really take for FIRST to write team numbers on pieces of paper and draw them out of a hat? For this amount of trouble, let us go to a simple solution.
This is my solution, and a very simple one. For each regional FIRST should buy popsicle sticks for as many teams as are attending. If there are 48 teams for the SV regional, FIRST buys 48 popsicle sticks. Each stick will have one team number written on it. Then they are all placed into a corrugated cardboard box with a lid. You shake the box really hard for five seconds, and then open it. Without looking, a person picks out sticks three at a time, forming alliances. After all of the sticks have been picked and having recorded the alliances, all 48 sticks are placed back in the box and the process is repeated as many times as necessary.
For added effect I suggest that the choosing of alliances be done in plain view of all of the teams. This will generate a lot of excitement as well as doing away with any doubt of having truly "random" match schedules.
(I think this is a realistic and fair way of chosing alliances.)Only one problem: how long would this take for 100+ matches? A few hours, surely.
The regional directors, as well as the rest of FIRST, has a little less than two weeks to figure out a solution. This is plenty, doing away with my original idea of doing it on actual competition day (which now that you point it out is a waste of time). If it takes time to end up with a fair game, so be it.
Luckyfish05
04-03-2007, 02:01
I hate to point this out, but there are regionals next weekend. Sooner is better than later in this case. If they're going to do something they'll probably (hopefully) do it this week.
Referring to what Joe Matt said in the VCU Regional Thread...
NEW 2008 GAME HINT: Not just interact with the field and what you know about, but have to interact with other robots what they do. Put yourself in the minds of your future alliance partners and opponenets. Not just about driving a robot onto a ramp.
Instead of thinking of this randomization (or lack thereof) as a flaw in the system, maybe, just maybe, it was intended to prep us for the 2008 game? If it is going to be needed that we know our alliance teams in and out, why not give us a taste of this collaboration in 2007 (even though it would've been nice knowing it far in advance.. :p )? Maybe in 2008 we'll have solid alliance teams (I doubt it, but its possible).....?
I know, I know: it's a long shot. (And probably not the reason at all.) But 'tis a funny thought! :D
SVR March 17!! :D
For this amount of trouble, lets step away from algorithms and any other sort of computerized system, as any kind of solution is bound to result in patterns, which we want to avoid to have a fair game.
This is my solution, and a very simple one. For each regional FIRST should buy popsicle sticks for as many teams as are attending. If there are 48 teams for the SV regional, FIRST buys 48 popsicle sticks. Each stick will have one team number written on it. Then they are all placed into a corrugated cardboard box with a lid. You shake the box really hard for five seconds, and then open it. Without looking, a person picks out sticks three at a time, forming alliances. After all of the sticks have been picked and having recorded the alliances, all 48 sticks are placed back in the box and the process is repeated as many times as necessary.
For added effect I suggest that the choosing of alliances be done in plain view of all of the teams. This will generate a lot of excitement as well as doing away with any doubt of having truly "random" match schedules.
(I think this is a realistic and fair way of chosing alliances.)
1) This is a waste of time. Volunteers and/or FIRST staff have much better things to be doing with their time.
2) You'll end up with teams playing a match, and then a second match, without enough time between the two. Hence the need for an algorithm.
Last year's algorithm, or plenty that have been posted by users here on CD would be fine. Anything but what we have now.
Wayne C.
04-03-2007, 04:42
we played 25 in at least half of our matches today. IMHO, i was very entertained by the eliminations at the regional, they were some very intense matches so i'm not complaining, but it seemed to me that they put a low number with a mid-ish number, and a rookie team/high number (<2000) I don't see how you can expect a fair and or "random" match from the same groups/sets of teams based on the teams number and not their robots specific ability/skill/efficiency this year
As the other half of that situation I wholeheartedly agree with you. We go to play ALL the teams in the event. We looked forward to playing WITH the Hawaiian Kids at least once yesterday and that never happened.
And we know that MORT knows how to kick our "bots defensively. There was nothing THAT wrong with the old random match generator. It certainly beats the nonsense we saw this weekend. The old format might not have made everyone happy but the new algorithm has succeeded in making just about everyone unhappy.
Cpt_Dave_Lister
04-03-2007, 05:30
Not random, EVERY, and I literally mean EVERY game we played had at least team 948 (They became the number one seed). Because of these "random" match schedules we ended at the opposite end of the rankings.
GaryVoshol
04-03-2007, 07:44
Let's not contribute too many opinions on what was in the minds of the committee who designed this algorithm.
I don't think anyone consciously said, "Let's put vet against vet and rookie against rookie." Rather, the "max time between matches" constraint was emphasized over all other constraints. Then they simply decided on team number as a primary sort - they could have done it alphabetically, or could have done it randomly. It wouldn't matter. Once "max time between matches" was decided as having priority, teams would end up seeing the same teams over and over again.
The popsicle stick in a bowl thing can easily be set up as a computer simulation. But then we have decided that "randomness" is the highest priority, and time between matches means nothing.
Teach the computer could to do a popsicle stick picking. For Round1, totally randomize it. To pick for Round2 make a constraint that there has to be at least "X" matches before a team must compete again. "X" would vary based on the number of teams in a regional. It should be at least 3, but in the larger regionals could be 4 or 5. To pick the first X matches in Round2, the popsicle sticks of any team that played in the last X matches in Round1 would be set aside. Once the first X matches are picked, all the remaining popsicle sticks are thown into the drum, and the rest of the matches of the round can be drawn. Repeat for all matches up to lunch time. Then totaly randomize again, and finish Friday - or maybe set the X constraint for the first match of the afternoon to 1. Totally randomize again and pick for Saturday.
This wouldn't work as well for the small regionals of 36 teams or less, because it would effectively divide the pool into two, one group playing the first half of the round and other playing the second half. Perhaps there the constraint could be set at 2, with a 1-match-length break between each Round.
This would have to be somewhat adjusted for regionals with numbers not exactly divisible by 6.
Get working, FIRST contractors!
AcesPease
04-03-2007, 07:51
As the other half of that situation I wholeheartedly agree with you. We go to play ALL the teams in the event. We looked forward to playing WITH the Hawaiian Kids at least once yesterday and that never happened.
And we know that MORT knows how to kick our "bots defensively. There was nothing THAT wrong with the old random match generator. It certainly beats the nonsense we saw this weekend. The old format might not have made everyone happy but the new algorithm has succeeded in making just about everyone unhappy.
I would like to make a move for any system that lets us face as many different teams as possible. I am even willing to play two rounds in a row if this is needed, we have more than one battery, so unless you have a breakdown this should not be a major dissadvatage. The seeding match system does not need to be "random" but it should give the teams the widest exposure to each other. Many of us go to these events to meet as many other teams as possible. Playing the same teams 7 or 8 times greatly narrows that experience.
The PNW Regional data shows a pattern. Not to take away from every team who performed well, but is this really the "intended" outcome? Note that the rules clearly state the schedule cannot be changed after it is published.
That pattern isn't really that shocking. Any team that has faced the top ranked teams in a match will tend to have a lower ranking. Any team that has faced them multiple times will have an even lower ranking. The bad part here is not that teams that face good robots multiple times end up with a poor ranking, it is that teams HAD to face the same good robot 4+ times.
Anyway, watch this space for redos of the stats I posted yesterday, but including the final day.
Dominicano0519
04-03-2007, 08:57
the matches in nj all have a certain order to them.
ex.
our match schedule was
1
11
21
31
41
etc....
that was a good thing( no back to backs)
however
we had the same team against us every single match
and the lower number team on the opposing alliance was our alliance partner in the next match
an example would be our first three matches
1: we had 11( lowest number in NJ) and opponents were 25(next lowest) and 486( the constant opponent)
2:we had 25(opponents from 1) and they had 41 and 486
3: we had 41 and they had 75 and 486
this trend just kept on going and going and going.
also since the pits were arranged by numbers i noticed something else while scouting for the following matches i never had to talk to anyone in my row or in the middle rows. all of my opponents and allies were in the same two rows every single match.
i don't think this is right. it should be the luck of the draw( maybe that explains the whole red alliance is better than blue idea)
Travis Hoffman
04-03-2007, 09:00
Hey, by using the search feature (orange bar at the top of the page), you would find there is already a very well traveled thread topic on this matter.
Please post in the following thread.....
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=55178
Dominicano0519
04-03-2007, 09:03
Hey, by using the search feature (orange bar at the top of the page), you would find there is already a very well traveled thread topic on this matter.
Please post in the following thread.....
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=55178
uhh did u notice at what times they were written?
apparently we started writing at almost the same time, just since my post was longer i took longer to write
Ok, rather than spamming with a few billion lines of text, I'll just do the summaries:
There are three main stats here:
Competitior Pool Size - The size of the set of all robots a given team played against
Ally pool size - The size of the set of all robots a given team played with
Opponent pool size - The size of the set of all robots a given team played against
All the pool sizes are given as a percentage of how many robots were at that regional. That way, you can say "ooo, at St Louis last year I could expect to play with or against 88.5% of the robots at the regional". Note that the lower numbers for the bigger regionals is predictable, since the more robots you have at a regional, the fewer matches you'll have and therefore less chance to 'meet' them all (also its a bigger pool to meet from anyway).
2006 - Aim High
NASA VCU Regional
Average Matches Played: 8
Robots at regional: 64
Competitor Pool Avg Size: 60.6%
Ally Pool: 26.5%
Opponent Pool: 36.6%
Pacific Northwest Regional
Average Matches Played: 10
Robots at regional: 46
Competitor Pool Avg Size: 83.7%
Ally Pool: 43.1%
Opponent Pool: 54.8%
Great Lakes Regional (I know it hasn't happened this year yet, but its hard to find 2006 results)
Average matches played: 8
Robots at regional: 63
Competitor Pool Avg Size: 61.3%
Ally Pool: 26.9%
Opponent Pool: 36.6%
St Louis Regional
Average matches played: 12
Robots at regional: 40
Competitor Pool Avg Size: 88.5%
Ally Pool: 54.1%
Opponent Pool: 66.5%
2007 - Rack n Roll with fun happy matching algorithm
NASA VCU Regional
Average Matches Played: 8
Robots at regional: 66
Competitor Pool Avg Size: 36.3%
Ally Pool: 25.7%
Opponent Pool: 26.2%
Pacific Northwest Regional
Average Matches Played: 8.1
Robots at regional: 54
Competitor Pool Avg Size: 44.4%
Ally Pool: 31.4%
Opponent Pool: 32.0%
Jersey Regional
Average Matches Played: 7.2
Robots at regional: 59
Competitor Pool Avg Size: 40.3%
Ally Pool: 25.8%
Opponent Pool: 23.8%
St Louis Regional
Average matches played: 8.6
Robots at regional: 45
Competitor Pool Avg Size: 52.4%
Ally Pool: 39.3%
Opponent Pool: 36.4%
So as you can see, the # of robots you meet in gameplay drastically dropped from previous years. Something I noticed though is that there has to be substantial overlap between the ally and opponent sets in 2007*, something that wasn't present in 2006. This means that much more than in previous years, teams would face one team as an opponent as well as play with them as an ally.
*That is to say, summing the size of the ally and opponent sets in 2006 results in a number only barely larger than your total competitor size, implying that few robots are in both ally and opponent sets. In 2007 however, ally + opponent is often much larger than the competitor pool.
Also note that St Louis's big drop is probably helped by the fact that more robots came to it, AND they ran far fewer matches than last year.
uhh did u notice at what times they were written?
apparently we started writing at almost the same time, just since my post was longer i took longer to write
The first post in the other thread was started on march 2nd (two days ago), while yours was started today.
nuggetsyl
04-03-2007, 09:34
OK we keep talking about the problem. Now lets work to fix this. Programing challenge. Make a system first can use to set matches. I am not a programer but can something like this work?
1 can only play with a team once
2 can only go againts a team once
3 must have 6 matches between rounds (or 5 if it works better)
The Lucas
04-03-2007, 09:34
My dad had a good suggestion for how they should generate match schedules. Just generate matrices (size [6] by [total number of matches] filled with numbers 1 to number of teams) that are optimized for number of unique opponents and unique allies, but meet a reasonable rotation rate constraint*. Make these matrices for all possible numbers of teams at a regional (24-100 or so).
Now these optimized matrices can be used at every event. Just randomly assign each team a number 1 to number of teams and drop into the corresponding spots in the matrix.
These optimized matrices will take time to generate, but that is a one time cost for the foreseeable future since the same matrices can be reused. It doesn't seem difficult to write an algorithm to generate these matrices, since it is similar to the classic 8 Queens puzzle. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_queens)
* When I say rotation rate, I mean the number of a the number of matches until the same team has to go again. Expected rotation rate is (number of teams)/6. I thing 50% of expected rotation should be the minimum constraint of any subset of matches
OK we keep talking about the problem. Now lets work to fix this. Programing challenge. Make a system first can use to set matches. I am not a programer but can something like this work?
1 can only play with a team once
2 can only go againts a team once
3 must have 6 matches between rounds (or 5 if it works better)
Here's an algorithm
del 2007_algorithm
copy 2006_algorithm to 2007_algorithm
Fixed!
Also, your constraints aren't good. At a small regional like waterloo where there are few robots and many (12+) matches to be played, not being able to play a team twice is impossible. 3 opponents * 12 matches is more than the robots at that regional (30 last year). That's why you have to start using less concrete things like "minimize the # of times a given robot plays another", which makes it more difficult. How do you know a given algorithm minimizes that constraint?
With less than a week before the next set of competitions, there is not enough time to write, test, re-write, distribute, explain, and implement a new system. However there is time to hand out last year's system (which wasn't perfect but a lot better than this) and just use that.
To satisfy a lot of the issues, bring back the 2006 system with a few changes.
1 - no team can play 2 matches in a row
2 - no team can play more than 2 matches in 2 rounds
- ie: you could play match 6 and 8 but then not play till match 13 if there are 36 teams at the event
This is not perfect and your team could end up playing 4 games in 7 matches but that is the worst scenario. You could, in a 36 team regional, play matches 10, 12, 14, and 16 but then not play till match 34 and 36,
The fact is that the longer that you put between matches played the less random the teams that you play with becomes. I seem to remember the same issues being said last year with Hatch. Part of last years issues was that at the regional, score keepers did not set the variables right. At one venue I was at the practice schedule was the same as the match and almost all of the teams played were in your group of 6. A little tweak in software and we had a much better schedule.
We may not be able to use last years match generation as the software belonged to Hatch and they are gone.
overlord
04-03-2007, 10:09
Even with our rookie team, we pretty much faced our sister school, Team 2191, in every match as well as a few times with another rookie team 2140. It didnt really bother me since it led to us being the highest seeded rookie but lets spread the love around and see some other teams.
Does anyone know what FIRST had in mind with this years algorithm? My guess is no. I am sure that FIRST has made a major change in how alliances are set by looking at the alliances observed over the last three days and all the anaylizing that has been done. Given that, FIRST will probably be looking over the results to see if what they had intended to happen actually happened. If the results are what FIRST was looking for, I see no reason for them to change (not necessarily my personal opinion, especially if it was to force any team to constantly be opposed to one of the power house teams, that is just plain wrong). If it did not, FIRST may or may not change the algorithm. A change in the algorithm would be considered a major change and FIRST will probably be resistent to make changes this late in the game. The time for major changes like this is during the off season. Pardon me for my naivete, but, shouldn't a change like this be disscused in an open forum before it is instituted? That may have happened and I was simply not aware of it. If FIRST does not change the algorithm, I believe the least they could do is explain to us why the changes were made and what the results they are looking for are. My personal opinion is that you should be allied with and against as many different teams as possible. You learn to work with a lot of different people and stratagies. The teams that were always against eachother were probably getting a little tired of allways facing off. Team number should never be used for anything other than identification. If the alliances continue as they are, let's get over it and plan our statagies accordingly. GAME ON! Good luck to all the teams out there.
888 and 868 have been against each other in St. Louis 4 times
BlondeNerd
04-03-2007, 11:14
I don't know what the intent of the scheduling was, but I was a bit saddened by it. I love meeting most of the teams, but since I am in the pits I usually only get to meet our neighbors and alliance partners/opponents. Because we only played with a limited number of teams, I didn't get to meet very many people.
Another negative effect was that some teams played against each other every match. One thing I always point out to people who I am explaining FIRST to is that an opponent one match is an ally the next. Teams cannot play with poor behavior towards their opponents because they will have to play with them next. I know that teams should "play nice" regardless, but it is much easier for team ABC to feel animosity towards DEF if they play against them in every round. I am not saying that any specific teams showed ungracious professionalism towards any perpetual opponents. I am just pointing out that this setup made it easier for teams to see each other as opponents and not co-competitors.
Testament-Doom
04-03-2007, 11:20
Also, your constraints aren't good. At a small regional like waterloo where there are few robots and many (12+) matches to be played, not being able to play a team twice is impossible. 3 opponents * 12 matches is more than the robots at that regional (30 last year). That's why you have to start using less concrete things like "minimize the # of times a given robot plays another", which makes it more difficult. How do you know a given algorithm minimizes that constraint?
Simple. You could write a code that you can change variables based on those 3 principals that nuggetsyl suggest so it works better for each regional.
As a reply to BlondeNerd. What ever will happen to coopetition?
OK we keep talking about the problem. Now lets work to fix this. Programing challenge. Make a system first can use to set matches. I am not a programer but can something like this work?
1 can only play with a team once
2 can only go againts a team once
3 must have 6 matches between rounds (or 5 if it works better)
One other thing to consider is that FIRST likes to have rookie teams on an alliance with veteran teams so that they can gain experience. You also want to avoid having an alliance made up entirely of rookie teams.
Nuttyman54
04-03-2007, 12:30
Another thing that the system affects is alliance selection from the point of view of the teams picking. Sure good scouting can tell you what teams can put up how many points and so on, but you really are in the dark about a lot of team's cooperative abilities.
Anyone with ramps is ineffective if their partners can't get up. Sure, you can look and physically see if their drivetrain can do it, but are the drivers good enough? will they come back to get on? will they listen to specific instructions on how to get up?
Until you play with them, it's difficult to tell if you can actually work well with them, which is especially important in a game that requires as much cooperation and coordination as this.
for the record, I am not complaining about either of our alliance partners (you guys were great). As one of the main scouts however, it was very frustrating when putting our list together of teams we would like to work with, since we had very little information on so many teams.
Corey Balint
04-03-2007, 13:41
This was definitely the worst match sheet I've seen. It made so many matches so much easier than others. I heard that it was suppose to average the totals of all the teams in the alliance and then get a similar average against. It made qualifications significantly easier for certain teams, and near impossible for others. It got very boring throughout the day. It made matches very predictable, and again, simple to win for certain teams.
Tristan Lall
04-03-2007, 15:05
I was just looking at the St. Louis Regional thread, and after reading RoboPhantom's post, I think I see a problem in the way the surrogates are assigned. Would anyone care to check my reasoning (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?p=590082#post590082)?
Basically, it looks like the rules require surrogates that aren't necessarily needed, and the number of surrogate assignments in St. Louis was excessive.
People keep asking about FIRST's intent with the programming change. In 2005 (at smaller regionals), situations arose in which teams would have to play matches that would be only 2 apart from one another. If everyone looks at their match schedules from week 1, it is apparent that FIRST has done everything they could to maximize the time between matches where the same teams are involved (hence giving teams more time to repair and prepare). The repeated comments of people having match schedules of #9, #19, #29, #39.... etc. tells us that they have succeeded in this optimization.
Unfortunately, we have a second equally important constraint in which teams do not want to have to play with or against the same teams for every match. So now we have 2 separate constraints. First is the time between matches and second is the number of common partners. From this, we want to minimize the following:
Min: (time between matches) + (number of common teams from previous matches)
To successfully complete this, we have to apply weights to either side (to use the weighted sum method).
So the equation becomes:
Min: a*(time between matches) + b*(number of common teams from previous matches)
where "a" and "b" are weights and where a+b=1.
In 2005, it seems that a higher value was set for "b" than "a." Conversely, it seems that "a" was maximized for the week 1 2007 match schedules. The solution would involve finding appropriate values for "a" and "b" that bring the solution to somewhere more reasonable.
Unfortunately, this analysis is just that... and analysis. I have absolutely no understanding of how to set up team schedules based on this method, only how to evaluate how good a given match schedule is.
Also, Lucas. That idea sounds amazing. If generic schedules were made for every possible number of teams attending a regional (say from 24 to 80), then these could be used based on how many teams register. For people who are afraid that this would eliminate randomness and that you'd play the same teams every year at the same original... have no fear. At the drivers meeting, teams could have a representative pull a number from a hat held by the head referee to determine their seeding into the "optimized pairing matrix."
Just my 2 cents.
[This is long, so I'll bold the important parts.]
I think that the original idea was probably to space the matches apart as far as possible (something my team noted happily), but we didn't appreciate it when, after we complained to the organizers, they handed out "entirely new" match sheets, asking us to rip up our old ones in front of them first, in which the only change was that teams previously listed under "blue alliance" were now under "red alliance." I would rather have been told that there was nothing they could do rather than being tricked. I don't really know what the reasoning behind the new match sheets was, and I don't mean to whine, but it really wasn't very nice.
Also, I think the most important side effect of the new pairing system was stated at the top of page four by Cuog (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=55178&page=4): at Trenton 694 faced 637 for all seven of our matches. 637 was a purely defensive robot, and we formed our match strategies around the fact that we would be defending our strongest cappers against them every match. It didn't help that we were conspiring against them (and probably vice versa) and our pits were right next to each other. I thought that they were a great team with really nice people and I really hope nobody holds any grudges, because I know that there were people on my team that regarded them very aggressively during matches (and vice versa). I feel like the point of these competitions is to make people feel good about their robots, not bad about other robots.
****Most importantly, we should aim to win matches based on the strengths that we built into our machines. We shouldn't have to win them by picking on other robots' weaknesses. We didn't get to cap a tube or deploy our ramps successfully more than once because we had to play defense, and this was what we had built our robot to do.
637 and 694 will see each other in at least one other regional, and I really hope the algorithm for match selections changes by then. I think the best and quickest solution would be to revert to last year's algorithm. Perhaps there are pros to the new system, but the cons outweigh them by far. I'd rather have three minutes between my matches than have to spend a year raising money just to face one other team again and again.
AdamHeard
04-03-2007, 20:03
C'mon Dave, please comment on this thread and provide us some insight to the intent and/or if there will be any changes.
:confused: :confused: :confused:
deshirider430
04-03-2007, 20:07
612 played 611 every match, we were so unhappy because team 611 was such a great team and didn't get a chance to show off there robot as much as they could of.
Bharat Nain
04-03-2007, 20:09
One other thing to consider is that FIRST likes to have rookie teams on an alliance with veteran teams so that they can gain experience. You also want to avoid having an alliance made up entirely of rookie teams.
While those are some great thoughts, it makes the regional unfair without an effort of being fair either. By following nuggetsyl's system, they are bound to end up with atleast one veteran team in atleast one of their matches. It is more preferable to the majority of the teams and makes the rankings at the end of the day much more fair. The alliance pairing was horrible but I can say one thing. If there is one team I have scouted very well, it is our fellow team 11. They were in the pits right next to us and against us on the field. I am sure they can say the same for us :p.
CraigHickman
04-03-2007, 20:21
I'm really hoping this problem gets fixed. I do call it a problem, because it ruined the regional for me. I was very thankful to be chosen for the Elimination rounds, but the composition of teams selecting alliances was baffling. On there was a team whose arm scored a total of 4 tubes the entire Qualifiers, and whose drivetrain was able to be pushed around by a bot on Mechanums. Our team was paired every match with a defensive powerhouse, which made every match into a pushing game. It got to the point where we said as we went to the filed "Oh goody... time to wear down some more expensive tread for nothing."
As for the scoring system on the field that I've heard mentioned, it worked very well, so mad props to FIRST for that.
But I sincerely hope this issue gets resolved for later regionals...
Dasistmeinmoped
04-03-2007, 20:39
In NJ,
25 vs 11, 3 of 6 matches.
25 vs 41, 3 of 6 matches.
(im on 41)
ALSO the other 3 matches we played 75. Every other match we were paired AGAINST both our pit neighbors and 2 of the top 8 teams. We finished last, yes our robot failed this year, and our crab drive was a flop, but this was just a great way for first to kick sand in our faces.
0-6-1
'07 Judges Award Winners (hah)
Guy Davidson
04-03-2007, 20:52
Like most other voices on this thread, I think there is a big problem with the way the system is currently set. Teams should not be forced to compete against similarly numbered teams every time. This is not what we paid for, and not what we worked a month a half during build season for. Teams deserve to compete against all opponents, to get a feel for what many teams can do.
I also believe that writing a new algorithm before the next set of regionals is not only possible, but also a necesity. I am currently working on a new algorithm myself. I don't expect my code to be used - I have under a year of experience in Java (in which I'm writing the code) and only a few years of programming experience overall. My belief is that if I can write a code that will behave correctly in a few hours today and some testing tomorrow, then someone of the hunders of professional programmers, or the thousands of college students, or the dozens of thousands of high school students that are affiliated with FIRST can write something better than I did. And hence, there is no reason for the current algorithm to be used for another set of regionals.
I will post my code tomorrow, after I get around to testing it, if I believe it is worthwhile.
Craig1989
04-03-2007, 21:06
Has/Is anyone planning to contact first about this issue? We went up against 540 every single round in the VCU competition and while we only lost a couple of times we really disliked this schedule and would hate to be in the rough side of the deal. (It worked out ok for 540 in the end). Additionally I know for a fact that 611 was a good robot, but 612 was simply a huge ramp and there was very little 611 could do, hence they lost almost every round. Does anyone have any plans to try and do something about this before the next set regionals?
Craig has a point. Everyone who was affected by this and think it should change should probably write their local FIRST coordinator and express their concerns. If enough people do it, perhaps they'll be able to adjust the algorithm by next week. Depending on how it is written, it may be as simple as adjusting some constants. It is entirely possible that the right people don't read Chiefdelphi on a regular basis and furthermore may not be reading this thread.
Contact info:
States A-L (http://www.usfirst.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=2986)
States M-O (http://www.usfirst.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=2988)
States P-Z (http://www.usfirst.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=3010)
Outside the US (http://www.usfirst.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=2990)
AdamHeard
04-03-2007, 21:18
Craig has a point. Everyone who was affected by this and think it should change should probably write their local FIRST coordinator and express their concerns. If enough people do it, perhaps they'll be able to adjust the algorithm by next week. Depending on how it is written, it may be as simple as adjusting some constants. It is entirely possible that the right people don't read Chiefdelphi on a regular basis and furthermore may not be reading this thread.
Contact info:
States A-L (http://www.usfirst.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=2986)
States M-O (http://www.usfirst.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=2988)
States P-Z (http://www.usfirst.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=3010)
Outside the US (http://www.usfirst.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=2990)
Just sent an email to the LA regional planner; I will post any insight I receive.
AcesPease
04-03-2007, 22:11
Craig has a point. Everyone who was affected by this and think it should change should probably write their local FIRST coordinator and express their concerns. If enough people do it, perhaps they'll be able to adjust the algorithm by next week. Depending on how it is written, it may be as simple as adjusting some constants. It is entirely possible that the right people don't read Chiefdelphi on a regular basis and furthermore may not be reading this thread.
Contact info:
States A-L (http://www.usfirst.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=2986)
States M-O (http://www.usfirst.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=2988)
States P-Z (http://www.usfirst.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=3010)
Outside the US (http://www.usfirst.org/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=2990)
I just sent a message to the CT contact. I will try to contact some other people I know on Monday.
Guy Davidson
04-03-2007, 22:16
I emailed the Northern California contact, and will post any response I get.
AdamHeard
04-03-2007, 22:40
Just sent an email to the LA regional planner; I will post any insight I receive.
Jim Beck promptly replied (for LA and San Diego) saying he would look into it. Hopefully they can resolve this.
I still wish someone high up like would give us some information on this.
C'mon Dave, please comment on this thread and provide us some insight to the intent and/or if there will be any changes.
:confused: :confused: :confused:
I am glad that someone else notice that Mr. Lavery has not commented on this issue. Last year he was all over Hatch for every little problem. Is there a reason that he is not commenting. At the Winter War Zone scrimmage the guys from IFI told us that Dave Lavery and Tony Norman convinced FIRST to hire this group to write this years system.
We will just have to add 2007 to list of years were the 1st week of regionals had issues. (In my 10 years in FIRST I can not remember a year we did not have problems on week #1. Writing a scoring/field control system is not as easy as everyone thinks. And this years field is simple, no automation.)
The other thing we need to remember is that FIRST has all new engineers. There is not one engineer who has any previous FIRST experience. I am sure that next week will be better.
I am glad that someone else notice that Mr. Lavery has not commented on this issue. Last year he was all over Hatch for every little problem. Is there a reason that he is not commenting. At the Winter War Zone scrimmage the guys from IFI told us that Dave Lavery and Tony Norman convinced FIRST to hire this group to write this years system.
Perhaps Mr. Lavery is too busy volunteering his time to FIRST, to be posting his thoughts about this issue on Chief Delphi. I also find it borderline hilarious that you feel the need to call Mr. Lavery out, in a public forum, on a regular basis, but do so from an anonymous account.
AdamHeard
04-03-2007, 23:31
Perhaps Mr. Lavery is too busy volunteering his time to FIRST, to be posting his thoughts about this issue on Chief Delphi. I also find it borderline hilarious that you feel the need to call Mr. Lavery out, in a public forum, on a regular basis, but do so from an anonymous account.
Since I posted a similar statement I feel the need to say this.
I was not calling out Dave Lavery or accusing him of anything. I just knew that historically he was rather active here on CD and usually offers helpful (although sometimes baffling) insight. It's just nice to hear things from Dave Lavery rather than speculation because his words carry some weight, and speculation is... well just speculation.
... the guys from IFI told us that Dave Lavery and Tony Norman convinced FIRST to hire this group to write this years system.
... I wonder how much FIRST pays for the software in the "system". I could probably become very tempted to bid on that contract. Does anyone reading this have any idea how that opportunity is advertised? If "Yes.", would you care to share it with me in a PM?
Blake
yes random match scheduling doesn't seem to be that random... 1676 played against Team 1689 (a team we helped out in the pits) in 5 out of our 6 matches. that is one heck of a coincidence.
Dave McLaughlin
05-03-2007, 00:35
Dont forget 1983 vs. 2002 in every match at the PNW regional
A. Snodgrass
05-03-2007, 00:55
I have a couple of questions for the people posting in this thread.
1) Why does Dave Lavery have to post to this thread? Is there an actual rational reason?
2) Honestly, do you not believe that FIRST is aware of the problem, and working to fix it?
In my experience with working with FIRST, they have always tried their best to fix bugs in the software. And seriously, in seven years I cannot remember a year where there wasn't a bug in the software somewhere. I'm sure that they appreciate all of the offers to help, however keep in mind, software is not always a simple plug and play system. Correcting software is not always as simple as changing a broken physical part in a robot, or a piece that has malfunctioned. Anybody who has experience programming anything major will have also had issues where they had to track down bugs in the software, or where their software doesn't work the way that they expected it to. And tracing why the software isn't working the way that they want it to can sometimes be a tricky proposition.
I do have one request for everybody though, and those who were at PNW will possibly know why I'm saying this. As upset as you might be with FIRST, or with the way that the match scheduling comes out, please don't take out this anger on the volunteers in the pit. On a personal level, and as somebody who has competed before, I KNOW that I understood completely how upset the teams were, and I understood why they were upset, I was upset myself. It was very hard to stand and say, no I don't know of anything that I can do to solve this problem, and I sat there and wished I had a better answer to give then that, one that said that the problem was fixed, or that it was a simple fluke that wouldn't be permanent. And from experience, I cannot see FIRST letting it stand by this.
I'd also like to point out something. Quite often, we focus on what is so negative about something. But as has been pointed out before, FIRST also had something that worked right this time, and that is the field/scoring system. And for that...even with the current problems...I congratulate them.
In my experience with working with FIRST, they have always tried their best to fix bugs in the software. And seriously, in seven years I cannot remember a year where there wasn't a bug in the software somewhere.
Ashlee,
While I agree with the gist of your post, this is not a bug. Someone (or a group of someone's) intentionally made it so that the alliance pairings are not random. Whether or not FIRST or the GDC intended the game to be played this way is another story.
Whatever the answer is, let's hope we get a better system this week (if not, then next).
Noah Kleinberg
05-03-2007, 02:29
While I agree with the gist of your post, this is not a bug. Someone (or a group of someone's) intentionally made it so that the alliance pairings are not random. Whether or not FIRST or the GDC intended the game to be played this way is another story.
Whatever the answer is, let's hope we get a better system this week (if not, then next).
I was about to post the same thing. Another good thing to know is that (I forget what thread I read this in, might have been this one) the software was tested at a scrimmage this year, someone pointed out that the matches had not been random, and FIRST chose not to fix the problem then. Hopefully if someone sees that more than that one person at the scrimmage don't like it then they will change their minds.
A. Snodgrass
05-03-2007, 03:03
I pointed out something earlier, and I would like to reiterate it before we get too much further in this thread. Please do not assume just because we do not have a fix for the scheduling in the system yet, that FIRST is not working on the problem. Whether you term it as a bug or not is a point of view. I term a bug to be something that the end product user, which would be FIRST and the teams using it, did not intend for the system.
AcesPease
05-03-2007, 06:58
I pointed out something earlier, and I would like to reiterate it before we get too much further in this thread. Please do not assume just because we do not have a fix for the scheduling in the system yet, that FIRST is not working on the problem. Whether you term it as a bug or not is a point of view. I term a bug to be something that the end product user, which would be FIRST and the teams using it, did not intend for the system.
I have gotten an initial response back from my regional contact and the problem does not appear to be a bug. The schedule is motivatied by someone's idea of co-opertition. Also, the complaints that were voiced at the scrimmage never got to him, so he was unaware that anyone was concerned. I advise two things if you are concerned:
1) Contact your FIRST representative and or team leader so they can.
2) Do not assume that because you said something to the people running the field that that will be passed along.
Don't believe for one minute that FIRST did not test the algorithm and know what the alliance pairings would look like. If it is what you see is what you get then we have no choice but to live with it. The kids on the team I mentor are really upset. We did fund raising this weekend for nationals and the match pairings became a real sore spot. The mentors present tried their best to make them believe that it will be OK and fixed by the time we have our first regional. If we always go against a team that is slightly better than us we will never have a chance to win a match, what fun is that? And if we happen to be really good, what fun is there in defeating the same team over and over again? Another comment read in this thread that really hits the mark was about a team that designed an arm and a ramp and did not get to use them because all they did was play defense against a really good offensive robot. So much for creativity and hard work, not to mention all the time and money spent by sponsors. Our team basically has a drive system funded one sponsor, an arm funded by another and ramps funded by yet another. I am certain that each wants to see how their contribution performs. Not to mention the other mentors/sponsors that programed, worked on the camera etc. etc. The kids on the team I mentor want to be paired with and against as many teams as possible, not test thier GP by having the same opponent every time they go out. The best solution I have seen here is to manually create pairings for 24-80 teams and then on the first morning draw slots to place your team number in. That should not take more than ten minutes to do and another five minutes to print and distribute schedules. No one could ever say that anything was unfair about the pairings as the draw would be completely up to chance. I really have to bite my pen here, some random thought about how match pairings have not been perceived as fair in the past keeps coming to mind. Totally random, no perpetual opponent, as many allies and opponents as possible. It that really too much to ask for?
username115
05-03-2007, 08:46
We experienced a similar problem.
Every match at the NJ Regional was 836 vs 834
another interesting thing that happened was that one of our alliance partners for one match would be on the opposing alliance the next.
September
05-03-2007, 10:00
I pointed out something earlier, and I would like to reiterate it before we get too much further in this thread. Please do not assume just because we do not have a fix for the scheduling in the system yet, that FIRST is not working on the problem. Whether you term it as a bug or not is a point of view. I term a bug to be something that the end product user, which would be FIRST and the teams using it, did not intend for the system.
But this isn't a point of view. It's not a bug. I was told by a volunteer that FIRST intentionally paired a low number, a mid number, and a high number team together on an alliance. Many people I know felt that the least they could do is create a pool of what constitutes as a "low number," "mid number," or "high number" and let us compete with and against as many of those as possible.
I just hate being misled. I personally feel that if FIRST decides to not REALLY randomize the matches, then they should not use the adjective "random" to describe them.
I mean, what are the odds that my team went up against 435 in all eight seeding matches? Or that we go every 11 matches?
Folks, why don't we cool it for a bit. There is a lot of hear say going on and blaming FIRST for things that may or may not be true. There are MANY people concerned over the reports from last weekend. FIRST is being contacted and hopefully there will be some answers early this week. I am one that believes that we should all get to play with as many teams as possible. I am also going to wait to see what happens now that FIRST knows our feelings. FIRST is a great organization and I believe in it. Let's all see how they respond.
Guy Davidson
05-03-2007, 10:18
I've emailed Paul Woloshin, the FIRST Northern California regional director. He said that
Guy,
FIRST is aware of the problem as it happened here in Portland. This needs to be revised by FIRST national and I am sure they are working on it this week.
Regards,
Paul
CrazyCanuck809
05-03-2007, 11:44
Our team, 611, just got back from the VCU regional and we played against team 612 in every single one of our matches. This wasn't too good for us because they had a 12 inch ramp bot that lifted both of their alliance partners, so our record ended up being 3 and 5. I have total respect for their team and their robot is cool, but i would have been happy if we played them once then got to play other teams instead of the same one over and over again. That being said, the trip was still crazy fun.
I would suggest not to email regional contacts, they have enough on their plates this time of the year and have no control over the Field Management System. The people who need to know about this issue, were aware of it on Friday, they are busy at work fixing this.
After discussing the Issue with others, the thread has been reopened. Keep an eye out over the next few days for an official update on the situation.
Dez,
Thanks for the short cooling off period - sometimes that is a good idea.
All to often, in the heat of the moment usually, a thread topic like this disintegrates into flames.
Thanks everyone for not letting that happen to this one.
Be patient and I'm sure we'll hear more soon - from FIRST.
Keep up the good work - FIRST community on CD.
Mike Aubry
Team 47 - Chief Delphi
AdamHeard
05-03-2007, 20:49
I would suggest not to email regional contacts, they have enough on their plates this time of the year and have no control over the Field Management System. The people who need to know about this issue, were aware of it on Friday, they are busy at work fixing this.
After discussing the Issue with others, the thread has been reopened. Keep an eye out over the next few days for an official update on the situation.
What is your source for this, out of curiosity.
Also, to keep this thread shorter. Lets refrain from unnecessary post. It is no longer necessary to mention team xxx played team yyy z number of times.
Lets keep it to official information only.
Wow. I take a few days off to work on my real job, and come back to find quite a little firestorm going on here.
I won’t make any attempt to answer all the points that have been discussed here, but will try to hit a few of the highlights.
FIRST is already VERY aware of the problem with the match pairing algorithm. When the alliance assignments for the first set of matches was generated last Thursday evening, the issue became obvious, and they started to pursue a solution to the problem.
There is no need to call your Regional Director, yell at the Event Managers, telegraph your Senior Mentor, e-mail FIRST Headquarters, or petition your Congressional Representatives about your displeasure with the issue. FIRST already gets it. They can spend their very limited time reading your correspondence or solving the problem, but not both. Where do you want to have them focus their energies?
The match pairing algorithm is working exactly as it was designed, and it is not generating the match pairings by mistake. Unfortunately, the algorithm itself is fundamentally flawed, and was not developed with the appropriate constraints and priorities as defined by FIRST (random mixing of partners/opponents, reasonable time between matches for each team, scalability for various numbers of teams, variable match-to-match cycle time, etc. etc. etc.) factored in to the algorithm.
The new software developers implemented the algorithm based on their own set of heuristics for a "desirable" mix of teams in the alliance assignments. These heuristics are inconsistent with those used by FIRST, and were not what either FIRST or the GDC intended. Whether this happened by miscommunication, oversight, or misinformation, I don’t know and it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that FIRST recognizes their heuristics were not used, they recognize that the situation needs to be fixed, and they have communicated that to the software developers.
Keep an eye out for the next Team Update for information from FIRST regarding their plans to get the problem solved. My understanding is that FIRST has committed to making sure that the situation is corrected, that their priorities for match pairings will be used, and the match pairings for Week 2 competitions will be significantly improved.
-dave
yodameister
06-03-2007, 14:27
Thank you for a reply on this. I have to admit, I wasn't looking forward to the match pairings this weekend in Phoenix (possibly seeing the same opponent every match). Thank you.
Richard Wallace
06-03-2007, 14:28
... My understanding is that FIRST has committed to making sure that the situation is corrected, that their priorities for match pairings will be used, and the match pairings for Week 2 competitions will be significantly improved.
-daveThank you, Dave. :)
AdamHeard
06-03-2007, 14:44
Thanks Dave. We all pretty much thought FIRST was working on a fix, but when there is silence it leads to unchecked speculation. Sorry if we annoyed you at all;) .
Could we close this thread until the next team update so we don't get an absurd amount of random posts?
Rich Ross
06-03-2007, 14:47
[Huge sarcasm] Oh darn, now we have to scout all the teams for quals, not just 15 or so. [/huge sarcasm]
Its a huge relief to know that FIRST is working on it. Im glad that they, like BaneBots, are willing to recognize their mistakes and fix them rather than smooth them over like other organizations might be tempted to do.
Nuttyman54
06-03-2007, 14:52
I would like to thank FIRST for living up to my expectations. There was a problem. We complained. They listened. There's not much more we can ask them for. So thank you Dave, and thank you FIRST.
JaneYoung
06-03-2007, 14:53
Its a huge relief to know that FIRST is working on it. Im glad that they, like BaneBots, are willing to recognize their mistakes and fix them rather than smooth them over like other organizations might be tempted to do.
FIRST cares.
Sometimes when we get headed towards a firestorm as Dave aptly put it - we should make a 'FIRST cares' sticker and put it where we can see it before we press the 'send' or 'reply' button. Discussion = good, firestorms = worrisome.
Jane
We were at the Pacific Northwest Regional in Portland. We immediately noticed that we were up against 360 in every round and they were almost right next to us in the pits. I think it is very unfair and short sighted that FIRST has decided to seed the rounds like this. This was so pervasive at PNR that it had to be intentional. There were many other vets teams in this position.
In the past at our home regional in Philadelphia we were never able to play with many vet teams because of this "random" system. I know we all go out to win and 360 was a very good competitor, but going up against the same team means you may get to exploit something you may find with their robot. This is really un-fair.
I guess we need to let FIRST know this is unnacceptable. It seems to me they are striving for political correctness instead of competition. Looks like someone doesn't think this is important or understand what we are doing here. It's actually pretty sad.
I just read Dave's message...I am now more confused...
I am in software development... Who tested the results? Why did someone wait until Thursday night of the First regionals to check?
Why not ask us, the people who care the most? Generate a test sample weeks before, send it out and ask us to check it. I do this with the FLL competition I have run for 9 years. The teams check everyting from the schedules to the table assignments. They let me know of problems. I know there are few official "FIRST" people, but there are thousands of us. Ask us, we can help.
Guy Davidson
06-03-2007, 15:16
Thank you Dave for posting and clarifying the issue. I'm looking forwards to the next team update to see what are FIRST planning to do.
-Guy Davidson
Alan Anderson
06-03-2007, 16:17
Who tested the results?
According to what Dave just told us, the results were exactly what they were designed to be. No amount of testing against the design will reveal problems with the design itself. The problem was that the design didn't match the specification, or perhaps there was never a formal specification to begin with.
I too admit confusion, however. If you all will forgive a bit of rumor/hearsay: I heard at St. Louis from several people that the exact same issue was noticed and complained about in pre-kickoff tests, and that the complaints were dismissed because "That's the way FIRST wants it to be." Obviously the miscommunication occurred at a fundamental level.
Richard Wallace
06-03-2007, 16:22
... Obviously the miscommunication occurred at a fundamental level.Alan's conclusion matches what we (FTA, Lead Scorekeeper, and event staff in St. Louis) were told on Thursday night when we contacted FIRST to ask why the "perpetual opponent" schedule kept coming up no matter what we tried to change it.
Dave has told us this will be fixed for Week 2. That's good enough for me. :)
Ben Piecuch
06-03-2007, 17:15
Well, I started this whole thread... Now that we all have the answer we were looking for, maybe I can nudge this in a different direction.
(Moderators, please let me know if I should make this a new thread...)
If teams were constantly playing with/against the same alliances, how come the rankings stayed at it's typical distribution? Why didn't every team either go 8-0 or 0-8? Did this have to do with alliances switching up the strategy? Was it due to mechanical/electrical problems or improvements? Driver practice and improvement over the course of the regional?
I'm looking for specific answers from only the teams and drive/strategy teams that competed last weekend. If you don't have first hand knowledge of strategy sessions, driver improvements, or robot problems/improvements, please don't add what you "think" happened. (Sorry to be so blunt about this...)
Thanks,
BEN
Michael Corsetto
06-03-2007, 17:28
Well, the whole alliance was never the same, just one team over and over again. So if one team was dominant over their "continual partner", they tended to end up on the opposite sides of the rankings, but this wasn't an assurance that the same thing would happen every match. In our case, we went 5-2-1 vs 192, and a lot of how the matches played out had to do with our alliance partners, not just 114 vs 192 battling it out solo on the field. So I think in a way FIRST got a little lucky that the matches weren't so lopsided, but I do feel really bad for the teams that played against the same dominant team every match. I would freak out if I knew we had to play someone like the Poofs every qualifier :ahh:
I'm glad that FIRST realizes the issue and I hope we will see significant improvements in the weeks to come.
Mike C.
Fred Sayre
06-03-2007, 17:35
Team 488 played against team 492 every match from the beginning of thursday to the end of qualifiers on Saturday. We ended up winning most of our matches, but not all because sure enough, two robots do not decide the outcome of a 3v3 match. Not only that, but if a team gets the opportunity to play against the same alliance every single match they will be forced to come up with some unique and creative strategies to change the outcome.
We lost a match due to the (at the time) brand new tactic of deploying a ramp in the alley beside the rack to completely prevent us from getting back to our home zone to deploy and lift. This definitely caught us off guard. After this strategy started popping up and with how powerful lifting points became more and more teams started playing heavy defense. This is what lead to our two low points ties at the end of qualifiers and having both 1540 and 948 (two of the best pnw ringers) both play defense against us nearly the entire time during two of our elimination matches.
Nawaid Ladak
06-03-2007, 17:47
[Huge sarcasm] Oh darn, now we have to scout all the teams for quals, not just 15 or so. [/huge sarcasm]
lol, pretty funny, i wish
thank you dave, and yes, the update has been released, it is avalable on the website. i just saw it like 10 min ago
second of all, thank you FIRST for fixing a problem so quickly, hopefully everything turns out better for all of us later this week
BiTurboS4
06-03-2007, 18:04
This coming week should go off without a hitch, they will be implimenting an entirely new algorithm. Evidently the current one was written to such constraints that with any drastic modification it could break other things in the process. If this is all people have to point out about the first week of regionals, then I believe we're in best shape to start a season in almost 4 or 5 years. The only other issue that I noticed at the event that I attended was that the iPaq's that were used for automated scoring had a tendency to either drop their network connection or IIS would need to be restarted. The whole process took a round or two to get fixed, but was seemless to the audience.
Luckyfish05
06-03-2007, 20:55
Dave has told us this will be fixed for Week 2. That's good enough for me. :)
Here, here! Again as many people have said, THANK YOU DAVE FOR THE CLARIFICATION OF WHAT'S GOING ON! And I'm just happy it'll be fixed! :)
Akash Rastogi
06-03-2007, 22:33
Well, our team has been tracking this and other threads like it for a while now. We'll just have to wait and see what comes up at the NY Regional. Hope to see some of you there.
yeah it was pretty disappointing to see that trend happening in the practice matches today but we talked to some of the higher ups and their working on solving the problem before qualifiers tomorrow at Bayou.
cziggy343
08-03-2007, 22:31
one of our mentors was a volunteer (he was the announcer) at the vcu regional. he said there was a glich in the program. they were trying to pair a veteran team with a middle team with a rookie team. they messed up somewhere in the middle. and at the crossover point of the verteran/middle teams, they were paired together in every match.
Looks like the event staff will be able to use one of two different algorithms to set matches up. One is the perpetual opponent and the other the random opponent. See this post in the Q and A.
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=6163
For further details. A big thank you to FIRST for giving us a choice! Hopefully your individual event staffers will use random.
artdutra04
08-03-2007, 22:43
Looks like the event staff will be able to use one of two different algorithms to set matches up. One is called the perpetual opponent and the other the random opponent. See this post in the Q and A.
http://forums.usfirst.org/showthread.php?t=6163
For further details. A big thank you to FIRST for giving us a choice! Hopefully your individual event staffers will use random.Thank you FIRST! :D
Now if only we can strike a truce over the band saw and drill press fiasco, I will be completely relieved. ;)
Richard Wallace
09-03-2007, 11:59
Looks like Pittsburgh successfully chose the "random" match generation mode, rather than "perpetual opponent".
Looking at two "senior" teams 48 and 49 and their "senior" opponents in matches so far: (as of about noon Eastern time)
48: 49, 158, 395, 291
49: 48, 117, 247, 123
In my opinion pittsburgh is hardly random. My team was almost always on the field at the sametime as 117 and 337. Most of the time we were on their alliance. We also seemed to play agianst the same few robots over and over agian.
Tom Saxton
09-03-2007, 23:23
I've done a thorough analysis of the "perpetual opponent" algorithm and implemented a better way of scheduling matches. The results and description of my algorithm are in a white paper here:
http://www.issaquahrobotics.org/MatchMaker/
In looking at the Friday schedules for Florida, Bayou, and Great Lakes regionals, it seems that the "random" method may improve the problems with opponent duplication, but sacrifices both partner duplication and minimum gap between matches. Lots of teams have as few as two intervening matches between their closest matches, which isn't much time to get back in line. I won't know for sure how the algorithm does over the full schedule until Saturday's schedules are posted.
Looks like Pittsburgh successfully chose the "random" match generation mode, rather than "perpetual opponent".
I'm here in Pittsburgh, and it's really not looking like that for some teams. We saw a lot of the same opponents and partners several times today, and I know we didn't get the worst draw. In general, it looks a little better than last week, but it doesn't feel like it's outside the bounds of statistical error. However, I'm pretty much at peace with that. It wasn't an uncommon sight for us in previous years. The biggest deal for me is that we never were allied with a team number greater than 677. (For historical purposes, I am on 1743.) Why do we never get to play with a 1038, or a 1249, or a 1629? These teams are among the best here... team number is not a factor. I'd also love to play against a strong pair like 291/306 or 375/379, but it's not going to happen. It *can't* happen.
There's a big difference between random and arbitrary. While the algorithm may be improved, it's definitely not random, and to call it that is misleading. I expect that this is how it will be for the remainder of the season, but without a compelling argument in favor, I really would not want to see this algorithm back next year.
Tom Saxton
10-03-2007, 00:22
Here's my analysis of the Pittsburg schedule so far.
http://www.issaquahrobotics.org/MatchMaker/pit-fri.shtml
It's similar to the other week-two regionals that I've looked at with lots of teams having matches very close together and still more duplication than is necessary.
Michael Corsetto
10-03-2007, 00:28
Man, I'm really nervous as to how SVR and Davis match pairing is going to turn out. I never got to play with/against a lot of the great teams at PNW, and I fear that even with this "improved" algorithm we still we only be seeing 1/3 of the competition at our next events. Which to me just takes all the fun out of seeing how our robot performs with and against a wide variety of strategies. I distinctly remember doing scouting review on friday night at PNW and not recognizing half of the robots our team had taken pictures of, and I feel like I missed out on all the awesome work the other teams did. Where is the inspiration in seeing the same robots over and over?
I would really like to know how FIRST rationalizes lower team numbers as "better", because in our 11 year team history we have yet to win a regional (emphasis on the "yet" ;)) So please, please FIRST, bring back truly random matches. I understand the constraints that need to be made so that teams are not having back to back matches, but other than that, just let the teams play.
I think FIRST made a step forward with week two, but they already took two steps back at week one, so IMO they still have a little ways to go.
Mike C.
AdamHeard
10-03-2007, 00:38
The algorithm worked pretty well at LA.
except being against 330 match 1, 254 match 2 and 968 in math 3.
The only three matches we were running before the banebots gearboxes completely siezed up.
dtengineering
10-03-2007, 00:59
I would really like to know how FIRST rationalizes lower team numbers as "better", because in our 11 year team history we have yet to win a regional (emphasis on the "yet" ;))
I think there is still some ambiguity as to whether FIRST has actually stated that lower numbered teams are "better"... certainly they did not fare any better under the scheduling system for the first week regionals... but that could well be due to the scheduling system itself.
As for determining what a "better" team is, I know you mean in the sense of winning qualification matches, but the way you guys helped out the rookies next to you (for those who don't know, they not only lent them their robot cart, but then went and built a new one and gave it to the rookies) and played at PNW certainly makes you one of the "better" teams in the big picture. I've already forgotten which teams, exactly, won the championship, (although the final match has got to go down as a classic) but it will be a long time before I forget the way you welcomed a new team to FIRST.
Well done, and I hope you get to see a wide variety of teams at your future regionals.
Jason
Tom Saxton
10-03-2007, 13:02
The LA regional is better than the other week two regionals I've looked at.
http://www.issaquahrobotics.org/MatchMaker/la-fri.shtml
It still has issues with very short match separations and partner distribution is reduced, but the opponent duplication is better.
MariaChristineK
10-03-2007, 23:23
They call this kind of scheduling random?!? At Pittsburgh, we faced the same teams in almost the same alliances numerous times! It is much worse than past years...What is going on?
artdutra04
11-03-2007, 01:46
They call this kind of scheduling random?!? At Pittsburgh, we faced the same teams in almost the same alliances numerous times! It is much worse than past years...What is going on?At 35 teams, Pittsburgh Regional is a small regional, and the new randomizing algorithm needs a certain number of teams to be effective. With a large regional, you have a much larger pool of teams to randomly draw from for generating the match schedules than a small regional, which is why Pittsburgh has many similar alliances.
Small number of teams at a regional = small pool of potential teams to compete in any match.
GaryVoshol
11-03-2007, 07:13
It appears that neither the new nor the old algorithm are random, but are different versions of controled permutations of team assignments. There is still seeding based on team number. The first step is to divide the team list into 3 pools by increasing team number. Then to create each alliance, a team is selected from each pool, although assignment to Red or Blue appears to be random. Each alliance always has one team from the lowest third of numbers, one from the middle, and one from the top. The old algorithm stressed maximum separation between matches, which created the maximum number of repeat partners and opponents. The new algorithm has relaxed that separation a bit, but it appears that smaller regionals with fewer matches per round still hit up against the limits.
The biggest mistake, in my opinion, was decision to create the 3 pools in the first place. It completely eliminates the possibility of super-strong alliances consisting of all long-term veterans, which is probably the intent. For example, there could never have been an alliance of 33, 67 and 70 at GLR - regardless of how well those teams did or didn't perform. This penalizes teams that are in the lowest-numbered third that do not happen to have a strong robot that year. We all know there are teams that go through rotations of personnel, or have a fatal design flaw that isn't discovered until it's too late to correct, or don't perform as well as usual due to any number of reasons. Worse, this gives an extreme advantage to great performing teams in the 2nd or 3rd pool, who are now always paired with a veteran.
I hope they come up with something different for Atlanta, because almost everyone who comes to the Championship can be considered a veteran, or at least should be a well-performing team. Even the rookies that get there because they were in a winning alliance, or because they are Rookie All-Stars, deserve to be considered equal competitors.
At 35 teams, Pittsburgh Regional is a small regional, and the new randomizing algorithm needs a certain number of teams to be effective. With a large regional, you have a much larger pool of teams to randomly draw from for generating the match schedules than a small regional, which is why Pittsburgh has many similar alliances.
Small number of teams at a regional = small pool of potential teams to compete in any match.AD4 - I think it is worth noticing that with 36 teams in a regional, and with no other constraints other than minimizing repeat allies and opponents, it is possible for a team to play a full 7 matches without ever seeing a repeat among the other 5 robots on the field.
In a 36 team Regional one should expect to have to hustle between matches because there are fewer teams that need to go out on the field before your own team is "up" again; but there is no reason to expect to see lots of repeat allies and opponents just because "only" 36 teams are present.
When you choose to maximize the smallest time between each team's matches, that starts to make things hard. When you allow teams to see other teams twice on the field, so long as that other team is an ally once and an opponent the other time; your ability to schedule matches starts to improve,,,
Bottom line: A small population of teams is not a reason to say that alliances will repeat or nearly repeat often. On the other hand, using a method that forms alliances from small medium and large team numbers does throw a pretty large wrench (i.e. constraint) into things....
Blake
PS: Once a match scheduling algorithm (suggested in this forum or elsewhere) that doesn't depend on team number is implemented; it is a trivial exercise to run it once for each possible number of teams from 1 to 100. After those results are reviewed and found correct, at each/any regional, the organizers just randomly assign the participating teams to fill the slots in the appropriate pre-generated schedule. Done.... No one will know who their opponents and allies are until the results of the random assignments are announced. Everyone will know the patterns in the match schedule beforehand; but who cares? The "worst" that could happen is that they detect a flaw in the algorithm ahead of time....
Andrew Blair
11-03-2007, 12:23
Okay, big Pittsburgh feedback post.
First of all, though Pittsburgh is a small regional and it's quite reasonable to say that there will be a few teams who play against the same teams all the time, it was pretty bad. It didn't affect us too much, but we were with or against 1629 in ~75% of matches, and others often as well. We didn't mind it, and I still thought our match scheduling was okay, but for others, not so much. I saw at least thee teams go back to back or every-other-match a couple of times, and they were still playing the same teams. Again, we didn't notice it alot, but other teams had a hard time.
Rookie advantage time. Our choosing alliance partner, though an excellent team that was alot of fun, not to mention having built their robot in only four weeks, and shaving 80 pounds practice day, was seeded #1 alliance.
Their robot however, was not so good. Literally a box bot, they could not score, descore, or climb too many ramps effectively. At least one qualifying match they did not run at all. So, their contribution to their seeding was limited to the few times that they climbed ramps. It appears that they could not have seeded any lower if they wanted to. They were basically in the top eight regardless of if they ran or not.
In the long run though, being first alliance actually put them at a disadvantage. They had first pick, and could pick what they felt was the best possible alliance partner from the beginning, but they could not pick again until last. So, effectively, they had one excellent hybrid robot, an excellent defending robot(#1990, thanks!), and themselves. They had no chance to pick a scoring robot second choice(all gone by that time), and as a result, they had one robot who could score and ramp, and two screening robots, only one of which could quickly climb the ramp. Had they been seeded lower or had been picked, they would have been on an alliance with two strong robots to start with. Their alliance didn't really have a chance.
And therein lies the problem with a non-random match selection process. A similar thing happened another alliance, who was a rookie box carried into the top eight by "random" selection. There are consequential reasons why rookies should not be helped into the top eight. If they score and win their way in, more power to them. However, if they do not, they actually stand a better chance of winning if they are not put there.
Again, we had a great time and I had more fun than I've ever had at a regional I think, but when the cards are stacked against an alliance with no way to reverse it, it's not really a good thing.
Tom Saxton
11-03-2007, 13:53
Here are the stats on the Pittsburgh regional (http://www.issaquahrobotics.org/MatchMaker/pit.shtml) schedule. As previous posters have noted, the gaps between teams' matches got pretty tight, with one team having to play back-to-back matches. There's rampant duplication among both opponents and partners, with teams 123 and 314 paired as partners in half of their matches. Teams saw between 23 and 29 of the other 35 teams.
I've posted a white paper (http://www.issaquahrobotics.org/MatchMaker/) on the scheduling issues and a better solution to the problem.
Even in a small regional, a much better schedule (http://www.issaquahrobotics.org/MatchMaker/36x4.shtml) is possible, with a minimum match delta of 4, no partner duplication, much less opponent duplication and teams get to see between 29 and 34 of the other 35 teams.
Jeff Waegelin
12-03-2007, 11:34
My team, 830, managed to get matched up against both Martian teams 3 times apiece at GLR. We played 2 matches against 494, 2 against 70, and one against both of them. Somehow, that doesn't seem quite right...
65_Xero_Huskie
12-03-2007, 11:41
My team, 830, managed to get matched up against both Martian teams 3 times apiece at GLR. We played 2 matches against 494, 2 against 70, and one against both of them. Somehow, that doesn't seem quite right...
Yea, we played 1503 3 times in a row, which is VERY strange because there were 60 teams there. So....Can someone clarify why this is happening?
Of course its not random. My team played in the 9th match of every group of 10 for the entire qualifier. They have to change it soon.
AcesPease
12-03-2007, 13:38
Of course its not random. My team played in the 9th match of every group of 10 for the entire qualifier. They have to change it soon.
Sounds like there is still a lot of emphasis on time between matches, but improvements have been made. As I understand how any program that sets the matches will work, if you limit the time between matches to 8-12 rounds (for a field of 60), then you will be "randomly" matched with no more than 30 different teams and probably less. It probably is not practical to have a 5 round spread for smaller fields, so the number of "random" teams will decrease dramatically on small fields. I recall being frustrated at a small field regional a couple years ago, because we faced or teamed with the same team many times and did not play quite a few of the other teams. Anyway, the matches seem more mixed when the opponents are allowed to shuffle. The perpetual opponent algorithm makes an imperfect system worse, in my opinion, so I hope the event staffs are using the other option.
Let's try to have some fun out there :)
Well both of first problems this year bit us. In our last 5 matchs we had the same alliance partner. They either could not move or did not show because of a failed banebot. This made us have a 3 vs 2 match and we lost 3 out of 5. We droped for 2nd in the rankings to 17 witch hurt in the final selections. Please make the match selections more "random".
chinckley
12-03-2007, 14:16
We saw one team 4 out of 8 matches and many teams 2 or 3 times, even in a row. There were many, many teams we never saw. People were talking about this at GLR. Also we had one match we were on the floor and they were calling Last call for our next match (only two between them). We told the person at the gate that we were still on the floor and would be back soon. That was a fast one.
lenergyrlah
12-03-2007, 15:14
I just ran a lot of statistics from the VCU Regional. There were 66 teams.
The oldest third & newest third were against the same team each round. The pairings were done in numerical order. Example: 116 vs. 122 every match, 339 vs. 343 every match, 345 vs. 346 every match.
Each team in the middle third alternated rounds against the team right above them and the team right below them (in numerical order). So team 928 alternated rounds between teams 900 and 975. Since team 620 was the oldest team in the middle third & team 1522 was the newest team in the middle third they alternated against each other. So team 620 alternated between 623 & 1522, and team 1522 alternated between 620 & 1413.
The only thing "random" was which pairs were matched against which, keeping in mind that the 3 pools were completely separate.
Team 1731 was matched against 1655, & in each match every team in our alliance was newer than their opposing team (i.e. 346, 928, & 1731 vs. 345, 900, 1655). If FIRST honestly thinks that the lower the team # the better the robot then we should have lost every single match. How is this fair?
Nate Edwards
12-03-2007, 15:39
I just ran a lot of statistics from the VCU Regional. There were 66 teams.
The oldest third & newest third were against the same team each round. The pairings were done in numerical order. Example: 116 vs. 122 every match, 339 vs. 343 every match, 345 vs. 346 every match.
Each team in the middle third alternated rounds against the team right above them and the team right below them (in numerical order). So team 928 alternated rounds between teams 900 and 975. Since team 620 was the oldest team in the middle third & team 1522 was the newest team in the middle third they alternated against each other. So team 620 alternated between 623 & 1522, and team 1522 alternated between 620 & 1413.
The only thing "random" was which pairs were matched against which, keeping in mind that the 3 pools were completely separate.
Team 1731 was matched against 1655, & in each match every team in our alliance was newer than their opposing team (i.e. 346, 928, & 1731 vs. 345, 900, 1655). If FIRST honestly thinks that the lower the team # the better the robot then we should have lost every single match. How is this fair?
Sounds like what happened at PNW... Were the pits the same? (ie .. the teams that were always against each other removed by one pit)
ie team #1 (middle team #1) Team #2 (middle team #2)
Team #1 vs Team #2
middle team #1 vs middle team #2
At PNW it seemed that the top third and bottom third had the same problem... examples again: 272-360, 488-492, 957-997,956-955, 847-753, etc..... I am not sure of the specifics on the rookie teams but when we were alligned with them they seemed to be against one team alot.
Our team was in matches 70, 61, 52, 43, 34, 25, 16, and 7 ... Except for match 16 we were always on the red side... Always against 997
Tom Saxton
12-03-2007, 16:39
Lots of people on this thread have said they want a random schedule, but really what they want is a schedule that lets them play many different teams with as few duplicates as possible. This doesn't happen with a random distribution, it requires an algorithm that specifically builds a schedule to minimize duplication while keeping successive matches far enough apart that teams can turn their robots around.
FIRST now has two match scheduling algorithms.
Most of the week one regionals used what's being called "perpetual opponent" which does the scheduling where all of the teams in the high and low third (by team number) are paired with an adjacent team who is their opponent in every match. The middle third teams have two teams and alternate matches with them as opponents. There is no duplication of partner teams and great spacing between successive matches for each team.
After all of the complaints about the week one schedules, FIRST added a second algorithm called "random" which does a better job (but not a good job) of mixing opponents, but also duplicates partners and schedules matches very close to each other, even back-to-back.
Two of us (my wife and I) have implemented an algorithm that produces the type of schedules that people are saying they want: minimum duplication of partners and opponents, and good separation between matches. An analysis of the problem and our proposed solution are documented in a white paper (http://www.issaquahrobotics.org/MatchMaker/index.shtml) on our team site. We'd love to have FIRST use our algorithm. We've sent them mail but haven't heard back.
Michael Corsetto
12-03-2007, 17:03
So, has anyone heard anything official from FIRST about the Veteran/Intermediate/Rookie constraint that they sort of snuck into the "random" match pairing system this year?
As I've stated earlier, from the perspective of a slowly-improving, learn-as-you-go, student run team, this new system for forming alliances takes our low team number way out of context. I consider every team as a worthy adversary, and I base my evaluation of their performance on their robot, not some arbitrary number that FIRST assigns every team that registers for competition. Sure, some teams might have past successes (254 comes to mind :rolleyes:), but that in no way means that they will have a killer robot this year (which they do, but thats beside the point :p). And some teams, such as us, haven't even had "winning" success in past years, yet they treat us like we are the same level as the Poof's as one of the elite "A" teams.
If I was a rookie, I would be insulted that FIRST only considers you as a "C" team and that you need an "A" team to help you through your qualifying matches to make sure you don't lose badly every match. I saw plenty of inspiring rookie bots at PNW, 2046 sticks out to me, with their awesome autonomous mode that worked extremely well.
If FIRST was really trying to make this whole qualifying match thing fair, in order to rank the teams, they should go around the pits, look at every teams robot and see how they preform in their practice rounds. (Oh wait, isn't that what the scouts already do?)
I really don't see any legitimate reason for the qualifying match algorithm that FIRST has in place, and until they give concrete reasoning for this dramatic change, I will continue to try and bring back truly random qualifying matches. My team still has another $8,000 worth of regionals to attend this year, and I don't want to waste all that money on a bum schedule that limits what teams I will be able compete with and against.
I guess we'll all just have to wait until Update #17. :(
Mike C.
EDIT: So I guess truly random isn't quite what I'm looking for, more like random, but with a reasonable amount of space between matches (Mr. Saxton, very nice explanation of the yours and FIRST's algorithms, even I understood it :P. I really like the constraints you have in yours and I would love it if FIRST implemented it. Let us know what they say!). I don't see what's wrong with going back to the 2006 algorithm though. I understand that Hatch was in charge of it back then, but can't we just mimic that algorithm's results?
huskyrobotics
12-03-2007, 17:17
I agree that a wonderful program like first can be improved by looking at match scheduling. The issue that seems very fixable to me that has not been addressed is to insure that every team has at least two matches on any Saturday during a regional. I find it very unfair to families and friends of first teams that some schools have only one match on Saturday, while others have 3 matches. People do work and quite often Saturday is their only day to attend the regional events and cheer for their teams. If we want more support, we should enable the people of the community to support us.
Jacob Plicque
12-03-2007, 17:25
At the Flordia Regional Team 86 had several repeat pairings as follows:
Partners
1065 - three times
1592 - two times
Foes
1345 - two times
1649 - two times
There were 51 robots at this competition. I can believe that one repeat pairing is random, but this many repeat pairings points to a problem with the program.
:yikes: :eek: :rolleyes:
waialua359
12-03-2007, 17:27
according to the algorithm, we will be playing 254, the cheesy poofs, almost every round in vegas!:eek:
Travis Hoffman
13-03-2007, 06:06
I'm thinking teams like 968, 1038, 1126, 1114, etc. are loving the fact FIRST considers them to be "mid" (or even high, depending on the event) level teams.....
The likelihood of them and any other quad digit team partnering with a solid low numbered veteran team is a lot greater than the likelihood of a 2 or 3 digit team being paired with a solid quad digit team.
So how is this algorithm benefitting all teams again?
Jack Jones
13-03-2007, 07:14
I'm thinking teams like 968, 1038, 1126, 1114, etc. are loving the fact FIRST considers them to be "mid" (or even high, depending on the event) level teams.....
The likelihood of them and any other quad digit team partnering with a solid low numbered veteran team is a lot greater than the likelihood of a 2 or 3 digit team being paired with a solid quad digit team.
So how is this algorithm benefitting all teams again?
We loved it all the way into third seed at GLR.
Don't know about ALL teams, but sixth seed sure got a bonus from that. ;) :o
jagman2882
13-03-2007, 08:41
I'm thinking teams like 968, 1038, 1126, 1114, etc. are loving the fact FIRST considers them to be "mid" (or even high, depending on the event) level teams.....
The likelihood of them and any other quad digit team partnering with a solid low numbered veteran team is a lot greater than the likelihood of a 2 or 3 digit team being paired with a solid quad digit team.
So how is this algorithm benefitting all teams again?
maybe we will realize that advantage at buckeye....i didnt really notice it that much at FLR cause the teams we were continually paired with failed to show up to our matches.
Alan Anderson
13-03-2007, 09:24
So how is this algorithm benefitting all teams again?
A match schedule should not benefit "all teams". It should definitely not benefit any team or category of teams in particular. It should benefit the competition.
The seeding matches are undeniably intended to produce a ranking of teams. It seems reasonable for that rank to reflect how well each team performs, with the better-playing robots at the top of the list. The "perpetual opponent" schedule certainly doesn't give that result. A very good team can be beaten by a marginally better team every time, placing the very good team near the bottom of the list.
Assuming that veterans are "more good" and rookies are "less good" is a shaky thing to do, but let's do it for the sake of argument. Any schedule which intentionally pits veterans against veterans along with rookies against rookies can skew the final rankings to carry a bunch of "less good" robots to the top of the list. And if the assumption isn't correct, such a schedule serves only to deny teams the opportunity to play against a wide variety of opponents.
I believe that qualification match alliances should be assigned entirely without regard for team age, team number, or prior performance. The goals should be primarily to maximize the number of different teams each team plays against and with, and secondarily to make the time between matches consistently long. There still can't be enough matches to establish a very high correlation between rank and robot "goodness", but it seems to have worked well enough in the past few years.
I think that in defining the "random" algorithm somebody (the GDC, 4FX?) was trying to get qualification matches where the opposing sides are relatively equally matched. This should, in theory, lead to more exciting qualification matches.
AYSO (American Youth Soccer Organization) years ago started ranking players and then assigning them to teams at random. There ceased to be a "draft". Coaches are just given a list of names. At the end of the season coaches are asked to rank their players as A-E. The next season these rankings are used to create ballanced teams. Each team will have one A player, a couple Bs, etc. The new coach is not told of the rankings, but a good one will figure it out pretty quick. This system works pretty well for producing balanced teams. In fact, the winningest coaches are the ones that improve their players skills the most. The ones that turn their C players into C+ or B players.
But robot teams are not soccer players. Soccer players tend to stay at pretty much the same level from year to year. They might move a grade or so in one direction or the other but not huge changes in performance. On the other hand many robot teams fluctuate wildly in their performance from year to year.
While there is a slight correlation between team age and performance on the field, it is not close enough to use to achieve the presumed goal. So I hope this turns out to be another experiment in Utopia (a la 2001) that is quickly abandoned.
Now to relate things from the match generator's side of things.
The match generator has about the same idea of what is happening that you do. In fact if you are reading these threads and he isn't you have far more idea. There are two "buttons" used on the screen to generate matches. One is the Week 1 algorithm and the other is the "new and improved" version. If the operator is not careful or is ignorant of the difference it would be easy to pick the wrong button.
Now let's look at the SoCal Regional. We had 52 teams which break up into two groups of 17 teams and one of 18. Each team had 8 matches. So each team would have played with at most 16 teams in "other" groups and 8 teams in the same group. If you put 17 marked beans into a sack, pull one out, record which one it was, throw it back in and repeat fifteen times, chances are pretty darn good that you will get a repeat or two.
The software does have means to check the number of "repeat" teams. At SoCal the most repeats was two teams playing each other 3 times. At least that's what the auditing software told us and we believed it. Most teams had two repeats, but we figured that was acceptable considering the situation. We did not think to check for time between matches before publishing the schedule. I'll try to do better in Davis, but the worst was one team that only had a one match break. I'm not sure we would have regenerated the match list even if we knewbecause it was so good in other ways. You can't save a list to se if you get a better one or not.
The auditing tab is not obvious and is a step that some events might have missed. But honestly, even having the same team from another group in four matches would not have been unreasonable given the pool size. Having the same team four times from the same group probably means the wrong algorithm was used.
So somebody made a mistake doing something on which they might or might not have recieved proper instruction. This was a last minute change and was not in the documentation on the system. Oh by the way they were probably using vacation time to be there and probably spent numerous hours before the event getting ready, learning the scoring system etc. So be gracious and thank them for their efforts.
Jack Jones
13-03-2007, 18:36
...
...
The software does have means to check the number of "repeat" teams. At SoCal the most repeats was two teams playing each other 3 times. At least that's what the auditing software told us and we believed it. Most teams had two repeats, but we figured that was acceptable considering the situation. We did not think to check for time between matches before publishing the schedule. I'll try to do better in Davis, but the worst was one team that only had a one match break. I'm not sure we would have regenerated the match list even if we knewbecause it was so good in other ways. You can't save a list to se if you get a better one or not.
...
But if the person generating match lists has a bias or conflict of interest, then they could keep going till they got one they liked. A process that is to be repeated until "fair" can be perverted at will. The more likely event is that it will be perverted by someone who’s not even aware they are doing it. From what you say, there will always be something about one list or another that they do not like. But, from what you say, they will know a good list when they see it. :(
But if the person generating match lists has a bias or conflict of interest, then they could keep going till they got one they liked. A process that is to be repeated until "fair" can be perverted at will. The more likely event is that it will be perverted by someone who’s not even aware they are doing it. From what you say, there will always be something about one list or another that they do not like. But, from what you say, they will know a good list when they see it. :(
By "trying again until you get a better list" I meant getting a list that doesn't have more than two or three repeats for any team and that finishes rounds about the time you want.
Due to the randomness you get more or fewer matches sometimes due to the "extra" teams when the number of teams is not divisible by six. So your ending schedule bounces around a bit with different runs. It took us a while to figure out why that was.
Would it be possible for somebody to mess around with the schedule so they get an "easy" schedule while somebody else gets a "hard" one? I suppose.
We got the final team list around 3:30pm and needed to make the schedule by 5pm to allow for duplication. It took several tries to meet our operating parameters for schedule repeats. Continual regeneration to find a "soft" schedule for one team? It would be easier to get one close and edit it by hand, which can be done as well, though it isn't easy.
Another point, the people selected for this job are people who have been around FIRST for a while. People who have a track record for being fair and even handed. If they had noticable bias, then they wouldn't be there
In SoCal there were three of us, two from different teams and another volunteer who just does the regional who were present during the match generation. The only checks we made on the schedule were on the number of "repeats", and the start times for the final matches each day, which the program gives without revealing what teams are in what matches. A master was then printed and given to the Regional Director for duplication. If we'd messed with the schedule after that it would have been pretty obvious.
So while messing with the schedule is a possibility it is fairly improbable. But now that you mention it, it is probably best for multiple people with different loyalties to be involved in the process. One man can be bought, it is much riskier to buy two or three.
Tom Saxton
13-03-2007, 22:30
I added an analysis of the LA regional (http://www.issaquahrobotics.org/MatchMaker/la.shtml) to my site.
I added an analysis of the LA regional (http://www.issaquahrobotics.org/MatchMaker/la.shtml) to my site.
Tom,
Thank you for your posting. It looks like the auditing software may need some auditing. That 4+ column was the one we were watching and it was empty on our screen. Either that or we have an IO (Idiot Operator:rolleyes: ) error.
At least only four teams were involved and one of the "repeat" matches was an "extra" match and didn't count for 968. By the way we had 52 teams and only 16 teams wih "extra" matches.
We tried.
Tom Saxton
13-03-2007, 23:56
We tried.
Actually, of the week two regionals I've looked at, I think LA had the best schedule. It's too bad it takes so much effort on the part of the regional organizers to weed out bad "random" schedules. The folks who graciously donate their time to run regionals shouldn't have to do work that could be done automatically.
On a related topic, I do have a question about surrogate teams that a regional organizer might be able to answer. From reading the "Tournament" part of the manual (section 9.3.2), it sounds to me like there should only be surrogate teams in the last qualifier match to round out the final match, so I would expect at most 5 surrogate teams. However, all of the schedules that I've looked at for regionals when the teams aren't a multiple of 6 show many more than this, sometimes more than half of the teams. It looks like the scheduling algorithm pads out every round, rather than having matches that mix the last teams getting their first match with the first teams getting their second match, etc.
This seems odd to me, to have so many extra matches, which also make keeping a minimum gap between successive matches more difficult. It doesn't seem bad to me to put the last robots getting their first round against the the first robots getting their second round. All those teams get to scout and make robot improvements during the previous matches.
Is there some reason why it's bad to mix rounds slightly at the edges, assuming the schedule does a good job of giving teams time between matches?
Is there official FIRST policy about this beyond what's in the manual? If every round is padded, how do teams know when they are playing a match as a surrogate? Is it just their last match that doesn't count? If that that's the case, then padding all of the rounds doesn't avoid round-mixing and just adds extra matches that don't count.
I'd like to add this to my scheduling algorithm and want to get it right.
Is there official FIRST policy about this beyond what's in the manual? If every round is padded, how do teams know when they are playing a match as a surrogate? Is it just their last match that doesn't count? If that that's the case, then padding all of the rounds doesn't avoid round-mixing and just adds extra matches that don't count.
I'd like to add this to my scheduling algorithm and want to get it right.
The last round was the only one with surrogates. For the surrogate teams their "throw out" round is always the last match. It is indicated on the schedule if you know what to look for but it is not obvious. Even so the teams I mentioned it to seemed to know about it. Because our "extra" teams were all in the "rookie" group we only had one team on a side that was playing "for real" in the last few matches.
Tristan Lall
14-03-2007, 00:52
I was just checking up to see if the scheduling issue with the extra surrogates was resolved*. I didn't find any more instances of that problem, which is good.
What I did find, however, was that the team standings from Florida indicate that all teams except 1875 and 1694 played 8 matches. According to the team standings, 1694 played 7, and 1875 played 6. Now, of course, I checked the match results to verify this, and in fact, those teams are listed as playing 8 times each. So what happened? Is the software is interpreting a DQ/no-show as not having played the match (which could affect the rankings, depending on how it's handled internally)? Since I don't know the unpenalized scores, I can't deduce if the ranking score is the result of 8 matches, or of fewer.
Similarly, at GLR, 226 and 519 are both listed as having played 7, when 8 was the norm. 519 actually played 8, according to the match list, but 226 played 9. Does anyone have statistics from GLR to cross-reference against the published standings? Also, with 59 teams, we should be seeing 2 surrogates; who were they?
And in Brazil, 1621 is listed for 9, but played 10. Also, though it's due to an oversight in the rules, technically there should have been an all-surrogate match played, because the number of teams (15) is indivisible by 6, but the product of the number of teams and the number of matches per team (15 × 10 = 150) is divisible by 6. (A better solution would be to correct 9.3.2 to eliminate the useless match that is called for in this situation.)
In L.A., 8 matches was the norm; 702 is listed for 7, but played 9. Also, who were the 4 surrogates?
In Wisconsin, 8 matches was the norm; 1525 and 1103 are listed for 7, but played 9. And there would have been 4 surrogates.
In Louisiana, 11 matches was the norm; 462 was listed for 10 but played 12, and 2190 was listed for 10 but played 11. I presume that 462 was the lone necessary surrogate.
Maybe all of this is due to errors creeping into the match data after the fact, or maybe it's due to a non-intuitive way of displaying disqualifications. It's probably worth a look, just to make sure that the teams with strange numbers of matches aren't having their rankings miscalculated.
*The published match results at St. Louis indicated that several extra matches were played with all 6 teams being surrogates, in excess of the number required by 9.3.2. And 9.3.2 is itself excessive in cases where the number of teams is indivisible by 6, but the product of the number of teams and the number of matches is divisible by 6—like the 45 teams playing 8 times each at St. Louis; it calls for surrogates, even when they aren't required to construct a self-consistent schedule.
Tom Saxton
14-03-2007, 01:24
With 52 teams playing 8 rounds, you only need one match at the end with four surrogate teams completing the last round for two teams. But the LA schedule had the last four matches, each with two scored teams plus four surrogate teams. I can't understand how that makes sense!
I'm afraid to see what was happening at the regionals with half of the teams playing surrogate rounds...
waialua359
14-03-2007, 03:15
A match schedule should not benefit "all teams". It should definitely not benefit any team or category of teams in particular. It should benefit the competition.
The seeding matches are undeniably intended to produce a ranking of teams. It seems reasonable for that rank to reflect how well each team performs, with the better-playing robots at the top of the list. The "perpetual opponent" schedule certainly doesn't give that result. A very good team can be beaten by a marginally better team every time, placing the very good team near the bottom of the list.
Assuming that veterans are "more good" and rookies are "less good" is a shaky thing to do, but let's do it for the sake of argument. Any schedule which intentionally pits veterans against veterans along with rookies against rookies can skew the final rankings to carry a bunch of "less good" robots to the top of the list. And if the assumption isn't correct, such a schedule serves only to deny teams the opportunity to play against a wide variety of opponents. What made things worse is that we only played 7 matches. 4 against team 341 and 3 against 375. I never got the opportunity to coach against the other veteran 15 teams that have been doing FIRST longer than us. This was part of the reason we came all the way to NJ, to get an opportunity to play with some of the greatest teams from the East Coast.
I believe that qualification match alliances should be assigned entirely without regard for team age, team number, or prior performance. The goals should be primarily to maximize the number of different teams each team plays against and with, and secondarily to make the time between matches consistently long. There still can't be enough matches to establish a very high correlation between rank and robot "goodness", but it seems to have worked well enough in the past few years.
Well said Alan!
And another point I would like to add, besides advantages and disadvantages to match play.......our team didn't spend all those weeks with blood sweat and tear, just so that we could play the same teams over and over again. Why have a regional with 60 teams if we only see less than 10% of the field. Shouldnt we play with as many different teams as possible?
Courtneyb1023
14-03-2007, 07:43
Having been to GLR last week, I am really anxious to see what FIRST has in store for the Boilermaker and all other 3rd week regionals. All I can say is good luck to everyone and may the best robot/strategy/driver/team/alliance come out on top
Court
GaryVoshol
14-03-2007, 08:06
The extra surrogate teams seem to be a function of the A/B/C pooling scheme. At GLR the pools were 19 teams in A, and 20 each in B and C.
(59*8)/6 = 78 2/3, indicating that all teams could get their 8 matches in 79 games, with 2 surrogates. Instead they played 80 matches, with 8 surrogates. These were teams 57, 65, 67, 201, 226, 308, 313 and 406, all from Pool A.
I believe "played" in the standings is less than the number of times the team appears in the match schedule because of no-shows (not even a human player) to the field, or because of DQ's.
Tom Saxton
15-03-2007, 14:26
I've added a Beta release of my scheduling program to our web site. It's a console app so you have to run it from the command line. There are versions for Windows and Mac OS X. To get the beta, scroll to the bottom of the white paper (http://www.issaquahrobotics.org/MatchMaker/index.shtml).
Joker[eS]
19-03-2007, 21:11
Some of this "random-ness" didn't seem to be occuring at Midwest. 1525 never played 71, and a few other teams, and was matched against Motorola 111 3 times, and played with 858 3 times, and against 858 once. There wasn't any real problems with the time between matches, but we just didn't play quite a few teams on the field.
Nuttyman54
19-03-2007, 21:35
At SVR it appeared that the A/B/C segregation was still in effect, as 190 never played with 8, 100, 114, 115 or 254. 971 also played 3 rounds against 254 (none with) and 3 rounds with 1970 (none against). Overall, however, the pairings seemed a lot better than it had been
115inventorsam
19-03-2007, 22:15
At SVR it appeared that the A/B/C segregation was still in effect, as 190 never played with 8, 100, 114, 115 or 254. 971 also played 3 rounds against 254 (none with) and 3 rounds with 1970 (none against). Overall, however, the pairings seemed a lot better than it had been
It probably wasn't too bad for the most part. But 115 had an uphill battle the whole way, I remember that 114 was our opponent for 3 of our 8 matches all 3 of which we lost, one of those we had to sit out while installing a replacement gearbox from 488.
shakil07
23-03-2007, 08:36
Team 123 was paired up with team 314 five times in the Pittsburgh regional
it was good for us because we won all the matches
we won pittsburgh and detroit regional this year
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