Re: top ten best teams in FIRST
 

I think this has turned into the best robots not teams

In my opinion the best teams are clearly the hall of famers, followed by anyone who has ever won a regional chairmans award.

Re: top ten best teams in FIRST
 

The only past team that was even close was 254 at 6 consecutive from their rookie year, and 2056 shattered that record 4 years ago.

Re: top ten best teams in FIRST
 

469 was not by themselves dominant that year though 56-16-5 while very good is not entirely dominant. They had arguably the best robot for that particular game for eliminations.

Also
1114, 67, 71, 118, 148, 2056, 2826, 233, 2415, 314, 254, 973, 330, 177,971, 987, 1986, 469, 359, 16, 1717, 1625, 111, 33, 217. All amazing teams with track records of success.

While I admire all of them my favorite is 1717, because penguins.
There are many teams worthy of mention for robot performance but these are the ones that stand out most strongly to me.

Honorable mentions:
48, 51, 1918, 2054, 1477, 2169, 624, 234, 1983, 1538, 2046, 2337, 525... I could go on and on.

Re: top ten best teams in FIRST
 

71 wasn't dominant in quals in 2002 either but nobody will even attempt to argue that their robot was worse than the third most dominant ever.

Re: top ten best teams in FIRST
 

The Hall of Fame list does a pretty good job at listing the best "teams," just by nature of their award.

As far as on-field performance (best robot as opposed to best team), it's a much harder question to ask. People's views (mine included) will be heavily influenced by a number of factors including regional bias, age (I can't tell you how good any one robot was before about 2007), experience (I find that I'm more biased towards robots that I've seen in person), the list goes on. There are already different metrics that attempt to answer this question in terms of robot performance (OPR, CCWM, FRC Top 25 ranking, wins, win percentage, regional wins), but the truth is that none of them are perfect. There will always be a robot that had a bad event that lowered their OPR, or a robot that got upset in elims, or a robot that doesn't get enough exposure to be popular, or a robot that is so different from others that it's impossible to compare them.

That being said, I always enjoy having this debate, as discussing robot merit is usually an interesting and informative topic. I just think that there will never be a true answer to the original question.

Re: top ten best teams in FIRST
 

From my limited experience (Rebound Rumble and some YouTube surfing):

842
1717
1114
2056
254
67
987
341
111
16

Re: top ten best teams in FIRST
 

Alright, Andrew and Ian, I think your statistics skills may be needed here. There might not be enough data going back far enough to do this but...

A 4* year moving average of OPR ranking, CCWM ranking, match win percentage and/or event win percentage (including divisions and Einstein) would be an interesting way too look at trends in team competitiveness. This evens out teams that had one really amazing year, and also top teams that had an "off" year (eg, 1114 only won one regional :eek: in 2009).

I suspect the teams that we'll see at the top are the ones already being talked about, but there might be a few surprises. I think it's at least a more statistically significant calculation of the "best" teams (from a competition standpoint) over time.

*I pick 4 because it's the maximum turnover time for a high school student on a team. Other time blocks could be used

Re: top ten best teams in FIRST
 

This doesn't answer the question of the thread, but taking a look at recent FRC history, here's an OPR-based ranking of FRC Teams over the past 5 years (2008-2012):
1114
2056
67
987
254
25
111
1717
330
469
217

I took the average of the z-scores of the average of the teams' event OPRs. Unweighted by year or event, but each year was standardised so the data could be combined. It gave this top 11. I made it a top 11 because 217 and 469 were pretty close and there was a pretty big gap after 217. I only have easy access to the past 5 years of data. 1114 and 2056 were ahead of the pack by far. As for OPR, I think it's more trustworthy than any other easily accessible measure of success. You can find a more detailed break-down on CD-Media. That includes methodology, a summary of the more interesting data points, and the spreadsheet with ALL the teams.

Re: top ten best teams in FIRST
 

Who would you say are the top two? I'm guessing 469 in 2010 would be one of them.

Re: top ten best teams in FIRST
 

My guess would be 1114 in 2008.

Re: top ten best teams in FIRST
 

Bottom line, there is no shortage of absolutely phenomenal teams to look to for inspiration.

Re: top ten best teams in FIRST
 

It is insanely impressive how competitive 2056 and 1114 are. Consider we lived in a perfect world, and 2056 had a 95% chance to win any regional they entered. There is still only a 50% chance that they would win all 14! If they had a 90% chance of winning any regional, there is only a 30% chance they would still be undefeated, and if there was an 80% chance of victory only a 5% chance they would remain undefeated. (Suggesting that their true chance of winning is perhaps even higher than 95%)

After discovering this on a lark the other night, I went back and looked at their win percentages. It turns out that since the founding of 2056, they have won over 80% of their matches. I thought that was probably best-in-class, so I calculated the same percentage for 1114 -- they've won about 85%! In 2010 and 2011 combined 1114 could count their total losses and ties on two hands, despite playing in 134 matches!

Re: top ten best teams in FIRST
 

71 02
71 01
47 00

Other arguments can be made, but I'd probably call that my top 3.

Re: top ten best teams in FIRST
 

Exactly the three I'd choose.

In 2002, 71 was basically unstoppable. In 2001, they were the most precise at balancing two goals quickly. In 2000, 47 could do everything, and a few things nobody else could.

Re: top ten best teams in FIRST
 

Not in order:
67
111
71
469
254
1114
2056
233
1717
16
148
118

More then ten teams, it is hard to rank the teams are we talking about all time best or last year?