Re: Practice bot morality
 

While i generally applaud folks that do the math, with 2400 teams and numbers well into 4,300+, there is nearly a 50% total attrition rate in FRC. The probability of a team winning the 2010 championship when they were a one year wonder in 2008 is 0%... ;)
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Let me fix that for you...

FIRST is H-A-R-D!!! And to beat the best often, your going to need comparable resources or a bit of luck.

Often times, the #1 alliance is the winner of the event. The #1 alliance (especially when it wins) is generally comprised with the 2 best robots in the division and then the 20th to 28th best (2nd round pick). If you want to repeatably beat the best, you must be around the top 4 at an event which is generally the area filled by the high resource teams. At many events, the 2nd round pick by the number 1 alliance is around the 50%-tile for the event. So, to compete with the best at a regional, you generally need to be top 20-ish of 40-60 teams, and for the world championship top 20-ish of 80-90 teams. This is easily achieveable for most teams with some organization and preparation, and delivering on relatively modest performance goals.

Per comments above, 27, 33, 1718 and approximately 300 (6-10 slots x 50+ events) others fall into a category of being really good but generally not the top 2-3 teams at any given event. When you are around the 3-10th best team at an event, you will more than likely fall into a valley of making elims, but not in an alliance strong enough to win. I would still consider this competing with those amazing teams, though not being able to beat them on most occasions. Within those 300 teams, you will find hundreds of examples of teams with significantly less resources maximizing their potential through benchmarking, smart design, hard work, and determination. Every year on Einstein, you will find teams that many might consider "lucky" for getting picked by 2 other awesome teams. More often, these teams have made their luck by performing really well and putting themselves into a position to "be lucky".

Notice, I mentioned 300 teams above. That leaves about 2100 other teams within FRC. Many of those are young teams some of which are over their heads and/or don't know what to do. A significant chunk though are teams that have the resources to be the 2nd round pick, but instead over-reach or are underprepared. There are a host of relatively young teams doing well year after year by coming up with good reasonable goals that challenge them, and then executing on those goals. While I do not know many of them outside of michigan, I can tell you 1718, 1918, 2054, 2137, 2337, 2612, 2619 2834, and 3098 have been steadily improving the last several years and have been beating many a vetran team. There are a large handful of other young teams that have shown a lot of promise but it takes more than 1 year to see how consistent they are going to be.

Of the 9 teams above, I could go on for probably an hour or more on how impressed I am with those teams executing their plans. The more informed will also note that the above teams not only are competitive on the field, but have also won business, website, Chairman's, and rookie-allstar awards. Some of them have even fostered a rookie team themselves (with the rookies being aprt of the handful I am watching/looking out for). These are teams that are operating at or near the highest levels of what FIRST is trying to achieve.

If you are only paying attention to the 12 teams making it to Einstein, then you are missing 99.5% (2400-12)/2400 of what FIRST is really about. It is really humbling to compare yourself to those guys. If you start focusing in on the success of the 300 I mentioned above you will find a lot of teams that regard their season successful without having to measure it against other teams success. You will find many improvements your team can make with little or no cost to your team towards becoming one of those 300 (hopefully this number will get larger).

Back on topic:
You will also find a lot of the 300 are teams with practice bots (who spent the $2-3K on making a practice bot instead of flying everyone to XYZ), or maybe they rebuilt their 2011 bot to be like one of the other teams they admire. Or maybe they made serious robustness improvements and competed at some off-season evnts for $100 or... maybe your team will talk with them at your next event and find some of the things they are doing right that you can do and then instead of debating the morality of in-equalities of FRC we can talk about how 4XXX learned a ton from team 2XXX in 2012 and is now kicking bot in 2013...

Re: Practice bot morality
 

That's what keeps us working hard...we know that it's just as hard for everyone else. It wouldn't be fun if it was easy!

Re: Practice bot morality
 

Actually the odds are even worse than that...

Since FIRST went to the current divisional format in 2001 52.4% (74) of all Einstein slots (140 total) have been filled by just 24 teams with 2 or more Einstein trips!

35.7% of the total slots are taken up by just 12 teams with 3 or more trips.

42.9% (15) of all Championship Winner spots (35) in the same time frame were won by just 6 teams that have won 2 or more championships in divisional era!

The highest number team of the 24 is 1218.

The highest number team of the 12 is 968.

The highest number team of the 6 is 294.

All this said I'm willing to bet a coffee that with a list of 12 teams I can hit on 4 of the 12 Einstein competitors this year before I even know what anyone's robot looks like.

Edit: I forgot to cite my source, Jim Zondag's wonderful championship history white paper that he has published the last 2 years.

Re: Practice bot morality
 

Alex,
I have to point out that those teams that made it into the finals are not there because of their team number. However, those teams have recognized the advantage to scouting the division partners and being prepared to pick the best alliance. Our decisions are based on a variety of factors observed by our scouting team and long discussions in a strategy meeting.
I think it is also necessary to point out that there are holes in the numbering sequence for the teams that have dropped out over the years. While we are now over 4000 in team number, there are not 4000 teams. There is likely more drops in the three digit numbers than in the other groups.

Re: Practice bot morality
 

At the same time, it would probably be false to assert that name recognition has no value in choosing alliance partners, especially on the highest levels. All else being equal, you go with what you know, and you're more likely to give known commodities the benefit of the doubt (or more likely to avoid them) based on their reputation.

That's not a repudiation of anything at all FIRST-related, just an observation of human nature.

Re: Practice bot morality
 

Is there a link to this white paper? I would love to read it.

I would like to give 2 examples of the problem as I see it. The first is from a local wrestling club. They started as a way to expose young kids to wrestling and as a way of promoting the sport. They were very successful for awhile. They were recruiting 4 and 5 year olds into the wresting club and it was a fun thing for kids to do on a Saturday. Instead of being a fun activity for the kids, it became all consuming. If you wanted in you had to submit to all kinds of fundraising activities and travel as a parent. Kids all of the sudden "needed" warm up suits, etc. The team "needed" to travel hundreds of miles for competitions etc. 9 and 10 year olds were pretty much excluded by default because if the difficulty breaking into the sport. The casual crowd fell and left behind the fanatics.

example 2 are the local volunteer fire departments. They have the same problem. The training that is required, combined with the fundraising has left most of the departments with fewer and fewer members. There are very few people that want that kind of commitment.

I see the same sort of thing happening in FRC. Our kids aren't that into robots or robotics. The dozen or so kids that are part of the team will commit (kind of) to a 6 week build season and do a little fundraising, but overall it's a side thing. For most, everything else comes first. I've had kids miss practice because of the swim team, tennis, the school play, bowling, and even because they had an opportunity to go to a friends party or just because they wanted to sleep in and take it easy on a Saturday. I end up (thank god) with 1 or 2 kids that are into it and commit more time than they should. I have no help outside of a couple of parents. The local engineers have been burnt out by the other local teams (both in the double or tripple digit range). They aren't interested in commiting to being away from their family multiple nights a week and the weekend. FRC is becoming more and more competative. Practice bots, multiple regionals, etc, etc, are all leaving the casual teams further and further behind. I'm sure in some minds that's a good thing but if the goal is to expose kids to STEM in an engaging way I see it as very limiting.

Re: Practice bot morality
 

http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2383

It's actual just factual statistical data applying weighted rankings to teams based on championship performances. The idea was to settle some of the "whose the best" discussions IIRC.

Re: Practice bot morality
 

A FRC team without engaged and motivated students is like a car without wheels... it isn’t going to go very far.

I think one thing that you will find on most "elite" FRC teams is a team full of students who are willing to put robotics before other things in their lives. Dare I say that some of these students make their team a priority, right behind school work? I think you will also find that the mentors of these teams with these students play a huge part in creating that attitude. As an FIRST mentor, our goal should not be to simply expose students to STEM. It should be to inspire them, to create a passion or at least a respect for it. Without this, very little is accomplished. I have been exposed to many different things in my life, very few of which inspired me like FIRST. Many of those other things I could care less about. Do your students a favor and find ways to create that passion. In the end, it’s not resources or time or practice bots that make a team great. It’s the passion that the team possesses.

Now for practice bots. You don’t have to have one to win a competition... but practice does make perfect (or at least close to it).

Re: Practice bot morality
 

How does limiting others potential improve your situation? Should the fire department allow for less skilled individuals to put out fires? Should they use old worn out equipment?
For the wrestling, should you tell a kid to stop working out? Should you tell them they are not allowed to practice and improve until the others catch up?

I wrestled in middle school and high school. The coach talked to me quite extensively about doing free-style and doing Grecco Roman in order to be better. My choice was to do other things (4-H, Supermileage, chess tournaments...). My parents supported my choices. My senior year, I won my confernce, but lost sectionals. If I had listened to my coach, I might have been good enough to win sectionals. Possibly even do well at regionals, but I was not gifted enough to win semi-states or states in wrestling. While I did have a little regret at the time, my parents supported and overall, it helped me realize the power of my choices (I would make the same choices looking back). That being said, I would not want to disallow any of the semi-state or state level wrestlers from doing summer camp or travel league or ... If their choice is to be the 4th best wrestler in the State of Indiana for the 135 lb weight class for 1997... So be it. It wasn't my choice, but they should be allowed to make that choice. Their efforts might get them a wrestling scholarship. I made the choice to persue other things, and thus had lower than ideal results.

If your kids are not that interested, then they do not deserve to win awards against those that are trying harder and doing better work, and that is OK. Your job as a mentor is to help them realize the ramifications of not taking the initiative. In my opinion, you should also help coach them with dealing with the dissappointment*. If the team didn't fund raise enough to go to the championship... then you don't go to the championship. Your team didn't work as hard as team XYZ, then don't be upset with team XYZ when you are beat by them. It is perfectly fine to be dissappointed with poor results. It is a choice though to use that dissappointment to improve, stay the same, or fold up camp. What I find frustrating in this thread, is there is a lot of good advice on how to improve for relatively smalle means with big returns. If your team doesn't want it to get too crazy, that is fine. If your team wants to do better... they should begin to follow the advice others are willing to give.

*Also, in my opinion, the worst thing you can do is comfort your team by calling the winners cheaters. Unless you have proof of a team deliberately breaking a rule, you need to put a stop to the cheater talk right away. Having access to a resource your team hasn't developed is not cheating. Going to multiple events is not cheating. Talking with companies and presenting FIRST in order to get sponsorship dollars is not cheating. Many students will automatically come to the "they cheated" conclusion on their own. As a mentor you can choose to foster that behaviour or stop it.

Re: Practice bot morality
 

Yes, all these things would leave a casual team behind. However, no one said it was going to be easy if you want to compete at the highest levels. You can certainly build a kit bot, and can effectively compete with a well built one. FRC 1114 has a great series of videos and a iPad/iPhone app that will help a team to achieve those kinds of goals - just do a search on "Kitbot on steroids". Our team, as well as many others, work with local teams to assist them to build a robot like that as well, sometimes on the Thursday of the competition. Teams that build a kit bot, go to a local regional, compete against teams from around the world, seem to enjoy themselves and say "That was fun, I'll do it again next year." So there is a place for a casual team to be in FRC, just don't expect to compete at the same level as teams who work a lot harder than that. Would you expect a high school football team to be successful if team members only showed up on Friday night, expecting to be the starting quarterback? Why don't kids who play HS Varsity sports complain about the number of days they have practice - because they expect to work that hard if they want to be on the team. Why should we expect less for our teams?

I admit, we had a similar attitude many years ago. We did a little in the fall, we built the robot in 6 weeks, went to a regional, had a team dinner, and said, see you next year. We had 20 kids or so, who were "committed" at the level you mention. A couple of years ago, we decided working 10-12 weeks a year wasn't enough. If we wanted to really compete, we needed to have a year-round program. Our season now officially starts the day after our end-of-year team dinner. Since then, we have started to see the fruits of those labors. Instead of burning out mentors, we have now seen a growth in the number of mentors, who work longer hours. We have seen a growth in the number of kids actively participating on the team. We have 50+ kids who now are at almost every meeting, working their way through our training program, and into the team leadership. Twice, we have come within a single poorly timed penalty, from winning a regional. We have won the Regional Chairman's Award. We also won, with our FTC Team, the 2010 World Championship. We aren't in the highest levels of competition, yet, but we committed to working harder and harder every day to get closer and closer to being at that level.

How do you do that? How do you build a team like that. It's simple - Do your homework. It is our primary job to change the culture around us. When we were still a "casual" team, and long before we started seeing any level of success, we were in the Elementary schools, at the county fair, at Relay for Life, in the libraries, hosting training seminars, etc..... doing Dean's homework in our community.

Now, we engage more kids in STEM then ever before. When I see kids at our many outreach events, they will ask me "When can I be a RoboBee?"

Re: Practice bot morality
 

The methods your team uses say a lot about your team. However, the methods you rage against say a lot more about your team.

I don't care how you run your team as long as you don't disparage me or mine. Too often I see comments about how practice bots, multiple regionals, or having engineers is "cheating". I don't care if your team decides that these are not things you want. That's your choice but until such a time as there is a rule against it teams will decide to do it and you owe it to them to let them run their team how they see fit.

I've said it before and I'll probably have to say it again, FIRST is like a pizza. We all have different ideas how to make it great but that's what makes it so great. You can put sausage and bacon on yours and I'll stick with my tomatoes and basil.

Re: Practice bot morality
 

This is completely wrong.














359 says ham and pineapple is where its at.
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Re: Practice bot morality
 

?? I don't think anyone said it was cheating. If we had the resources and wherewithal we would be building a practice bot! and going to multiple regionals. That isn't where I'm coming from at all. I applaud those teams that do and I definitely don't think it's cheating. We had the pleasure of having the pits next to 1114 in Pittsburgh and seeing how they run their team. I had several great conversations with our students about how they (1114) were an example. I'm not disputing what it takes to make a great team or saying in any way that great teams are doing something bad. What I am saying is that the current rules ratchet up the level at which a team must operate to be competitive and drive more potential competitors out of the competition. When that happens it poisons the well for others. It becomes harder for other schools to start and develop teams when they hear how hard it is too compete. If the goal is to get as many students excited about science as possible, the current setup is a little off. However I do think that total team budgets or the build season could be changed to level the field a bit. Have the regionals all on the same day six weeks after kickoff for example.

Re: Practice bot morality
 

That would be extremely expensive for FIRST. There are only a handful of fields that are built. That's why the regionals are set up as they are. Fields are taken down, packed up on a truck, and shipped to the next location it is needed.

Also, some teams cannot make certain dates, venues aren't available. Plus, why would we punish teams that can afford to go to multiple regionals?

Re: Practice bot morality
 

There is absolutely no way FIRST would be able to do this. With over 65 events this year, that would require 65 vs. nineteen and more than 3 times as many volunteers to do all those events, plus all the administration to do it all on the same weekend.

And besides, how is the current regional schedule "unfair" or making the playing field not "level"? Every team at a given regional has the same amount of time to prepare. Going to other events is one way to do that, and it certainly goes a long ways towards inspiring more students. As many of us have already suggested, "leveling the playing field" is only going to make it, to put it bluntly, really lame. If there's nothing more to shoot for, what's the point?