April Absurdity 2013
 

I had the privilege of participating in a March Madness bracket this past march and with the recent success of the "Make your champs predictions!" thread, I think the concept carries over excellently to FRC. As such, I decided to create April Absurdity, the FRC version of March Madness.

For those unfamiliar, March Madness is based around the NCAA college basketball tournament and participants in a pool attempt to correctly predict how far each team will make it and who will win the tournament. The same holds true for the FRC implementation. Download the PDF, fill it out and turn it in by the deadline (below) and you are entered into the pool. The winner gets bragging rights. Here are the important things to know from the rules in the pdf, if you want to see them before you download:

• You may enter either a division or the full bracket. However, to fill out a bracket for Einstein, you must fill one out for all divisions
• The deadline is Thursday at 1 PM, before qualification matches start
• To submit a bracket, send the filled out .pdf to aprilabsurdity@gmail.com or drop by 639's pit in Archimedes and hand it in
• There is a 15% bonus for submitting it before Looking Forward posts so get going!
• I will be entering one myself so I promise not to look at any brackets in the aprilabsurdity gmail until after the deadline at which point they will be posted in this thread
• Make sure to put your name (and Chief Delphi name) down on the first page so you can be credited

Points are awarded in the following fashion, per team that makes it to the following point:
+1 pt for correct quarternalist
+3 pts for correct seminalist
+6 pts for correct divisional nalist
+12 pts for correct division winner
+18 pts for correct Einstein nalist
+24 pts for correct World Champion

For some logic on why the points are what they are, they are not quite exponential to encourage making bolder choices early on. However, they are significant enough to highly reward someone who picks correctly in the high tier.

Bonuses are granted for the following:
+1 pt for correctly predicting the number of matches a matchup will go to
+4 pts for correctly predicting where an alliance captain will seed
+10 pts for correctly predicting a full alliance (one time bonus)
+15 pts for correctly predicting a backup bot (+5 pts each for the following: backup bot called, backup bot replacing a certain robot in the alliance, and the identity of the backup bot; each may be obtained separately)
+15% bonus if the bracket is submitted before the annual Looking Forward post(s)

The alliance system slightly complicates things from a standard bracket but to make the system simple, if team 123 makes it to the semifinals, you will get the points for it, regardless of whether they are on the alliance you predicted they would be on. In other words, points are awarded based on the amount of correct semifinalists (or however far in the tournament you are) you have. The only exception to this is the 4 point bonus granted to predicting an alliance captain's position (ie I predict 456 will be captain of the 7th alliance; they are) correctly, and that is a one time bonus.

I will probably have a couple paper copies available for the taking in 639's pit (Archimedes) Thursday morning for people who want to fill one out on the spur of the moment but I would highly recommend doing it ahead of time, if only to get the 15% bonus.

Click here to download the .pdf file that you fill out - Right click>Download. I suggest Foxit PDF reader, the fill in boxes show up in bright orange. This will not work if you fill it out in Chrome and then right click>save as. You must download the file first.

Finally, if you are planning to submit a bracket, please post about it in this thread. Since the submission is not through Chief Delphi, I see the potential for this thread to fall to the bottom quickly. So post about if you are going to submit and post when you do.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

This is a great idea, definitely doing it.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

I would be a lot more interested if the submission deadline was after the match schedules come out. At this point, predictions are entirely luck based. Whoever can best predict winners with the match schedule available is a far more talented person than the person who gets lucky and guesses which top robot had the ideal match schedule.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Agreed with this sentiment. Those who do brackets well every year are the ones that do their research. Also, my MATLAB skills are getting rusty.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

When I made the make your predictions thread I only did Division winners because I thought people wouldn't want to take the time to do all of this. I clearly underestimate FIRSTers :p

I'll try to do this later today. Thanks for putting it together!

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Sounds awesome.

May I suggest an alteration to the scoring system as follows:

+1 Point for each correctly picked team regardless of which seed they are slotted.
+2 Points for each time your correctly picked team advances.
+5 Points for each time your correctly picked team advances/wins on Einstein.

+3 Points for each correctly picked team in the correctly picked seed.
+6 Points for each correctly picked team in the correctly picked seed advances.
+10 Points for each time your correctly picked team advances/wins on Einstein.

+10 Points for selecting a correct alliance. (+6 points if that alliance is also in the correct seed.)
+10 Points for correctly calling for a backup robot in that match. (You are allowed only 5 "call for backups" in the entire bracket.)

Set the deadline to thursday @ midnight. This allows us to fill out brackets now and really have fun with it. It also makes it a heck of a lot easier on you to calculate the scores.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

WHen I first saw the thread title, I was sure it was going to be about the 8.5" of snow we got here in the twin cities two days ago... but this is a pleasant surprise! I'll definitely be filling out a bracket!

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

The Curie Curse continues! they are the only division without Code Red's logo :rolleyes:

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

When Simon (GrimTuesday) and I were discussing the deadline, we decided that the hard deadline must be before qualifications begin, because once seeding starts you now have access to that information.

Because this is the first year, we'll see how things go, and members of 639 will hopefully continue the April Absurdity next year with improvements from lessons learned.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Update to the document: Fixed two copy errors and updated the prize to make it more clear what you've won.


As for time due and scoring, I think those are linked quite well. The scoring system I chose is nearly exponential which means that if a team you've chosen to go deep does, it greatly helps your bracket. Points are barely awarded for picking quarterfinalists correctly compared to picking Einstein bots right. What that means is that honestly, no matter the final seeding, the person with the more correct choices later on will do better. However, it is not completely exponential to make it still possible to win overall on a solid bracket with the wrong winner (s).

Also, you have access to the match schedule Thursday morning so if you really do your homework, you can modify your bracket in the five hours you have.

I'd be willing to talk more about making the deadline something like Thursday midnight but my goal in this was for this to be more of a pre-championships game, to keep us busy while we wait, not one that everyone does Thursday night in their hotel rooms.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

That took longer than I thought even without using major stats. This was fun but it became extremely difficult due to the amount of great teams this year. Newton felt the most top heavy and Curie felt the most even, but that just might be the way that I'm looking at it. Mine is almost guaranteed to be wrong.:D
A few neat Einstein points on my bracket.
3 HOF teams.
3 Canadian teams.
2 Michigan teams.
2 California teams.
2 Missouri teams.(A little bit biased ;) )
4 returning Einstein teams.
Winning alliance: 118-1114-3284 Keeping a blue banner in the show-me-state :cool:

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Sounds awesome anyways, good luck guys.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

I'm so in! Awesome idea.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

It won't let me save the form.
Because of this I can't send a completed form. What should I do?

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Are you using Foxit reader or Adobe reader?

If you're using Foxit, save with a different file name.
If you're using Adobe, may god have mercy on your soul. Download Foxit, copy everything, textfield by textfield.

Learned that the hard way.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Adobe
thankfully i printed off a copy first
i'll download foxit

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

This is a great idea! Definitely doing it

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Awesome competition. Submitted.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Wow Foxit is useful, I wish I had know about it sooner. Only did the Newton Division because it so time consuming to get in head of the captains. That pit-scouting thread was really helpful.

Notes-
The highest OPR team to be left out of Elims was a pure cycler
The lowest OPR team to make it to Elims was a supposed jack of all trades

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Submitted :D

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

could you make a non pdf format as well.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Curie all the way!
Michigan all the way!

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

We are working on a web interface like a real march madness bracket but unfortunately, we didn't think of the idea in time and it probably won't be finished for this year.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Sketch it out and scan it, or do it in MS Paint. I'm sure we won't mind :p

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

I'll at least do Archimedes.
But I might do the whole thing. It'll be in to you guys probably while I'm pit scouting on Thursday morning.
It might also reflect so really, REALLY high hopes on my part :D

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Don't forget to tell other people on your team about it, the more people enter, the more fun it will be!

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

submitted. Neat idea.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Definitely doing this. It's a great idea. Since this is just for fun, I'm putting down a bunch of MN teams. :)

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Submitted. Can't wait to see how close it is!

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

You guys need a hand with it at all? I'd love to help out.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Maybe I shouldn't be lazy and actually write my predictions down. Probably gonna end up inclined to putting Texas teams down...this is going to be good!

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Submitted.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

EricDross and Wing, looks like you guys got your wish!

In light of the release of the match schedules, if anyone would like to resubmit, they are welcome to. Just title your email "<Your Email>'s resubmission" and also put, after your name in the name field on the PDF, "resubmission". The 15% bonus before Looking Forward posts still only applies if you get your final bracket in in time.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

This is a great idea! I submitted my picks.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Submitted! :D

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Just submitted my bracket. It was a lot tougher to do than I expected.

If the stars align right, championships can produce some crazy match ups. I could see an Einstein Finals where almost every disk is drained if things go like I expect them too (which they won't, of course).

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Here is a zip of all the fully compliant brackets that were submitted by email. We should have automatic scoring for the properly formatted pdf brackets and have a team of monkeys transcribing the other ones into pdf. (submitted in person, word document, weird attachment service etc...)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/...lAbsurdity.zip

The documents are labeled by the CD username; Joe Ross did a full OPR bracket.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

I am surprised by the number of brackets submitted. I thought there would be about 40-50 not 20. Ohh well, better chance for me to win!

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

I thought it would be more like 100... It's not as fun when it's just a few people...
Then again, yay top 20!

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

lemiant and I had the same championship alliance 2056, 1717, 67. We also agreed on 6 of the other 9 teams on Einstein.

It looks like he and I were the only ones with the same idea.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Would it be possible to extend your automated parsing to also look at statistics (which team was picked to win einstein the most, win their division, listed in the most brackets, #1 seed was picked to win the division, etc)?

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

That moment when day 2 is over and you just KNOW you're going to lose... :P

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Yeah, that was part of my plan from the beginning for the scoring program. I'm still working on some of the issues in the bracket parser though, so it will probably be a little while before I get around to fully implementing the statistics

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

So how are you guys fairing after alliance selections? I have 56 points, having guessed two alliance captains, and not including the pre-Looking-Forward bonus

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Really wish I submitted now. I half filled in the Galileo bracket, with 118 as #1 seed picking 1114, and 1477 and 610 winning it all from the #2 seed.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Yeah my bracket isn't that good....I managed to only have 1 team in my bracket actually make it onto einstein. At least I can't do worse than 20th!

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

I placed 21st, don't worry.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

At least I had 3 teams that made it to Einstein; and 2 of them made the finals. But other than that, I dont think I did very well.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Here's a quick breakdown, just looking at Einstein, based on the posted brackets:

3 teams on Einstein:
Joe Ross OPR: 469, 610, 3476: 54 points
Lemiant: 469, 33, 610: 54 points

2 teams on Einstein:
tim-tim 33, 1477: 60 points
Adam Stockton: 469, 303: 42 points
Drennael: 469, 1640: 42 points
JoelG236: 469, 3476: 42 points
Joe Ross: 469, 1477: 42 points
Staxis: 469, 148: 42 points
DragonKing: 469, 1678: 24 points

No one had 1241, 1477, or 610 winning the championship. tim-tim had both 33 and 1477 making the Einstein Finals.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Holy crap, someone actually predicted us making it to Einstein?:eek: :D

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Yep, I actually predicted you being with 67 on einstein but I was more than happy to have you with us at einstein instead.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Wow I'm a little suprised that there were only 20 brackets filled out. A neat thing on mine was that I picked 14 correct quaterfinalist teams in each bracket. The weird thing is that I really didn't use any metric or stat while filling mine out. The sad part of mine is that I broke form and picked the third alliance to beat my "sleeper" teams in the 6th alliance on Newton. Well let's just say that 3476 was that sleeper team. :( A big shout out to frc team 639 for doing April Absurdity this year and I hope you decide to continue it to make April Absurdity a championship tradition. I hope people did much better than me and I think I might sit at 20 when this is over.

My Bracket Totals(unofficially):
A:70
C:45
G:42
N:38
E:18
T:213

Edit: I cant believe I forgot the Looking Forward bonus. Thanks for the reminding replys guys. With the 15% bonus I'm at 244.95 final points. I still think I'm going to be in the bottom half even though I made it without too much "burring" of my bracket from Curie(major congrats to Frc team 1678).

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

For my bracket, I used all 5 and 7 autonomous robots as my captains and then paired each with an elite cycler or a good full court shooter. Then I looked at the division opr rankings and filled in the rest of the teams.

Here are my unofficial totals:

Archimedes- 58
Curie- 31
Galileo- 46
Newton- 45
= 180
+bonus 21
=201
x1.15
=231.15

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Well, you could be proud! Your rank is no lower than 19! I got 208... (15% unincluded)

A: 60
C: 42
G: 37
N: 49
E: 20
T: 208 unofficially, *1.15=239.2


I have to say this was great fun ^^ Especially when I reallised I'm going to get my $@#$@#$@# kicked and started joking with myself about how bad I did :P

Edit: unrelated but I didn't know CD had censoring... I like it

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

YES!!!!!! It looks like I may just achieve last place.

Archimedes: 62
Curie: 49
Galileo: 42
Newton: 39
Einstein: 19
No Looking Forward Bonus: x 1.00
Total: 211!!!!!!!

I dare someone to try and get less than that.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Archimedes: 51
Curie: 53
Galileo: 50
Newton: 56
Einstein: 26

Total 236 x 1.15 = 271.4!

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

67 was actually originally above 148 on our pick list but seeing their FCS get shut down in their last qual match gave us the impression that they were not going to be able to FCS effectively, if we played counter-defense to protect 148 or 67 148 would be more effective because 67 could be blocked from further away. You guys were one of the top bots on our 2nd pick list, I couldn't believe how fortunate we were that you had been overlooked, you guys were a fantastic pick and you played outstanding defense, be proud of yourselves.
Thanks! we appreciate it!

When do these get scored?

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

I'm hard at work, but there's a few technical issues with them, as well as some surprise personal obligations that are sucking up my time. A fair number of brackets have mistakes which are confusing the parser enough that I have to manually enter them (missing fields, changing alliances, round finishing in 1 match, etc), and there's also another 10 or so that were submitted with methods other than a pdf form (my favorite being Joe Ross's OPR bracket, which has all the fields filled, but was somehow stripped of the form metadata). I'm hoping I can have the scores completed by Friday.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

I think I scored this right:
A:67
C:42
G:35
N:50
E:18
212*1.15=243.8

I might have missed a couple Captains...

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

It's saturday.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Allow me to paint a picture of almost every bracket submitted. 469 has seeded first in Archimedes, and picks 254 as their partner. 33 makes a run for Einstein from 2nd or 3rd seed, but looses to the 469/254 pair in finals, granting the 12pt division winner bonus to 469 on the vast majority of Archimedes brackets. On Curie, 2056 steamrolls the opposition from 1st seed, generally taking 67 along for the ride, and moves onward to Einstein. 1114 and 118 pair up as 1st alliance and do a similar thing to Galileo, with 610 losing to the pair in the finals. Newton sees 1986 as 1st seed, often with 217 in tow, plowing through the competition as well and quickly taking the divisional title. Einstein proves to be a tossup between these teams (except for Newton, which never wins thanks to 1114/118), with Archimedes, Curie, and Galileo winning roughly equal numbers of brackets.

With this in mind, the ranking of most brackets comes down to the small details. However, the ones that truly shine are the ones which break the mold and roll with an unexpected result (except for our Galileo winner, which was exclusively the expected result). The average score for all complete brackets was 250 points. All of our winners scored no less than 300. What did it take to make those extra 50 points? Let's see.

Archimedes was the largest source of points for almost all brackets. The heavily predicted win of 469 allowed all but one bracket to take a divisional winner bonus, giving Archimedes an average contribution of 70 points. However, predicting the win of 469 was not enough. The winner of Archimedes correctly predicted the length of 5 matchups, 16 QF teams, 6 SF, 3 F, and chose an alliance of 469 and 33 to win the division. With 93.15 points, Lemiant wins Archimedes. Honorable mention to Drennael for being only 5 points away from the victory.

Curie was the lowest scoring division, carrying a 50 point average contribution. The loss of 2056 in the semis threw almost all brackets off course, and in fact only four brackets got the division winner bonus. One of those brackets belonged to Dragonking, taking Curie with 74.75 points. Amazingly, another two of those brackets formed a perfect tie for 2nd place. With exactly the same number of points in every subcategory, we have no choice but to declare both StAxis and Aidan S. the runners up of Curie, at 70.15 points each. Aidan also gets an ironic honorable mention for having the only bracket to NOT get a division winner bonus in Archimedes.

Galileo made a valiant attempt to mirror Curie's undermining of brackets with an average score of 57 points, and though it was not as successful in avoiding divisional winners (there were 6 bonuses in Galileo), it managed to show that no human could defeat it. Luckily, humans were not the only ones entering this contest. A bracket based solely on team OPR and the match schedule posted ahead of time was generated by Joe Ross and submitted. Placing 610 as the 1st seed, with 1114 as the 1st pick, OPR took a decisive victory on Galileo with 86.25 points. Since some may object to a robot winning this challenge, the Non-Statistical Winner award for Galileo has been created. With 75.9 points, Lemiant and Aidan S. tied for 2nd place in Galileo. I guess Aidan can now have a full award, since he's won two half ones.

Newton proved to also be a low scoring division, with an average score of 52 points. 1986 appeared as the 1st seed in almost every bracket, including our winner's. At first glance, I didn't think this bracket had any chance at the top tier of Newton (it was one of the few that didn't predict the 1986/217 alliance!). While it didn't take the top score in any subcategory, Drennael's bracket had fairly strong scores all around, and won with a score of 75.9 points. Honorable mention to AdamStockton for taking 2nd from OPR by a single point (before applying the LF bonus).

And now, we come to the overall score. Unsurprisingly, all of the top spots were filled by winners of the divisional brackets. Drennael's bracket, in addition to winning Newton, held strong scores in all divisions and takes the FRC April Absurdity Championship, with 336.95 points. A well deserved 2nd place goes to Aidan S., who's bracket was the only one to pick a world champion (610). Lemiant comes in at 303.6 points for 3rd place, followed closely by OPR with 300.15 points.

No bracket obtained the bonus for choosing a complete alliance. I expected from of you!

The full results are displayed below, sorted by total points. The first is the scores with the +15% LF bonus applied (all but 4 brackets obtained this), while the second is the scores without the modifiers.

Note that there may be slight discrepancies between your own calculated scores and the official ones. I'm guessing this is caused by variations in the interpretation of the criteria for bonuses. Unless a major mistake in the scoring is found, consider these to be official and final.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

I'll send out the 'trophies' via PM tomorrow.

Apologies for taking so long to score them, but Ian did get it done, big kudos to him.

Currently in the brainstorming phase, for next year:

• Web interface
• "Live" scoring as the matches come in
• Running for all regional, district, and divisional events
• Real pools so teams can run the competition internally

What are the thoughts on the point allocations this year? The biggest issue I see is how under the current scoring rules robots get points for advancing no matter what position they are in an alliance (see OPR's bracket and 610 bracket; OPR had them as alliance captain winning galileo but they won as a second pick). I think the solution to this is to make a debuff the further away a team is away from their predicted position. Maybe 100% if they are within one and -50% if they are two away.

Also, a bonus is definitely needed picking the correct division to win Einstein.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

What was my score?

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

NVM, this was wrong

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

my calculated score was about 20 points off the official score 271 vs 253

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

My apologies for the mistake. While totaling up scores, your division winner bonus for Curie was accidentally dropped, taking 12 points off of your score for Curie. This correction makes you the winner of Curie :ahh:. The results post has been updated accordingly

There's still a 4 point discrepancy between your calculated Newton score and mine, but I re-scored your whole bracket by hand and couldn't find any mistakes there. Could you re-check your calculation of it? The best I can think of is that you misread 503 as 303 while calculating your score (1pt QF + 3pt SF).

Sorry, your submission was accidentally marked as scored before I started the pass for non-pdf brackets. Your total is 272.55 points, and is in the results post now.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

the 4 point difference is because I had 1986 as captain. I was using blue alliance and I forgot that they don't show the alliance members in order.

Re: April Absurdity 2013
 

Will this be coming back for IRI?