Re: Why do we bother bagging?
 

Can you show me evidence that it doesn't? I think it's pretty clearly a less-burdened hypothesis that, like with essentially every other comparable academic exercise, poorer kids are disadvantaged in FIRST than the contrary. Occam's razor states that we should thus expect it to be more probable than the contrary.

Re: Why do we bother bagging?
 

I did not mean to suggest that necessarily your approach was like that. I have seen some pretty poor approaches to seeking sponsorship over the 12 years I've been a part of FIRST.

I only meant to suggest that if you're having consistent problems being successful when seeking sponsorship, that perhaps its your approach that needs work, rather then simply throwing ones hands up in despair and blaming the socioeconomic status of their region.

Re: Why do we bother bagging?
 

Give me a few minutes and I will attempt to compare team zip codes median household income with a metric of team success for a similar timeframe (OPR, using 2008 data?)

Re: Why do we bother bagging?
 

I'm not blaming the socioeconomic status of my region; there is also a large factor of luck involved. We also are not "throwing our hands up in despair," and are constantly trying to better our fundraising efforts.

I am suggesting that your assumption that somehow FIRST manages to transcend all the pitfalls of our economics and correlate perfectly with effort in "99% of cases" is not particularly likely.

Re: Why do we bother bagging?
 

We're going to go into some parades (hopefully) and maybe get some sponsors.

Re: Why do we bother bagging?
 

This can be done with some data analysis, I can work on it after exams. But think about it - say you are rural enough to only have one machine shop in a 50 mile radius. Low economic status, no *option* to acquire resources. The underlying assumption of your post is that every area every team is in has a surplus of local entities willing to sponsor teams. Geographically, this just isn't true. Also consider that engineers tend to be more economically advantaged than the mean. So they will very likely live in higher income areas. Consider the difficulties of traditional fundraising in areas where there exists far less disposable income. It's fairly easy to see why a disadvantaged economic REGION makes FRC success take more effort.

I don't like the idea that you can just put in X units of work and success pops out. Success is not equal to work inputted, but it is proportional to it. So yes, try as hard as you can, obviously, but there is a lot more to it than that. I would also add that anybody good enough to win is clearly trying extremely hard regardless of circumstance.

Re: Why do we bother bagging?
 

Perhaps we should keep this thread focused on the topic at hand. Their are plenty of other threads about fundraising and the fairness of it that has been discussed extensively. As for whether to have a stop build day or not we would love to not have to build a second robot but we do so in order to be as competitive as possible. The money building a second robot is a waste really when we could have spent it towards another competition such as Robosub or maybe even take more students to championships and out of state trips.

Re: Why do we bother bagging?
 

So:

I've taken the 2008 OPR's for Maryland from this Excel file: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2761

and Compared them with the Median Household Income by ZIP code for each of the teams I could find OPR data for in Maryland in 2008 from here: http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/dis/cen...zip/index.html

Since the OPR's in that Excel were normalized and many are negative, I added 2 to them so that they were all positive.

Attachment 16343

I can see no particular trend one way or the other that greater socioeconomic status of a team's location correlates to better on-field performance. This is assuming we agree that in 2008, OPR was a good metric for performance, and that the median household income of a team's ZIP is a good metric for the socioeconomic status of a region.

Re: Why do we bother bagging?
 

[Snipped for being off topic]

Anyway, the topic at hand. I could do without "stop build." We continue working using a practice bot and our withholding allowance anyway, and we effectively pace ourselves regardless of the external controls placed on us. It's not the extra expense of the practice bot that gets to me, as we would build a second robot regardless, but the extra layer of bureaucracy with the paperwork and signing and deadlines. I think as more areas switch to districts and attending 2-4 events in a season (two districts, plus a third district and/or district championship) becomes more commonplace the deadlines and bagging/unbagging will become more cumbersome. As long as "stop build" exists we'll manage just fine and all, but I won't be sad to see it go if it ever does.

Re: Why do we bother bagging?
 

To come back to the OP:

We bag our robots because those are the rules of the competition. FIRST has decided to use those rules, and I like FIRST and the people who work there (like that Frank guy :P). Since they run the competition and I trust their decision making process, I trust that if/when they determine that it makes more sense to get rid of bagging and tagging they will make that decision. Clearly they have not determined that yet, so I'll be fine competing under current rules until they do.

Re: Why do we bother bagging?
 

^^ The cool thing about that is, 'that Frank guy' and others at FRC do read ChiefDelphi. Our discussions here on things, as long as they're constructive, help make FIRST a better place sometimes.

Re: Why do we bother bagging?
 

The original question was, "Why are we bagging?"

The short answer is: Because FIRST wants it that way.

This is despite all the good reasons people have given for eliminating the bagging requirement:
- less stress on mentors and students (this has been debated to death)
- money currently spent on practice bots could be better spent
- more time for rookies to become minimally competitive
- better quality robots at any given competition for everyone

A more useful way to look at this issue is, given that every year this same issue is raised and debated, why has FIRST not changed things? Why do they seem to be ignoring the expressed desires of many of the teams to eliminate bag day? They seem to be pretty responsive to other legitimate complaints people raise.

My theory is that FIRST has made a management decision that keeping bag day is more supportive of the long term interests and goals of the FIRST organization than eliminating it. To me, the most persuasive and least debatable point in favor is that being able to work on your competition bot until game day saves teams money. It seems to me that helping teams save money is way, way down on the priority list of the FIRST organization. If they wanted to help keep the costs down, they could do so very simply: reduce the budget allowable for the robot. FIRST, in fact, has gone the other direction, raising the budget in 2013 from $3500 to $4000.

Why would they do such a thing? Because it forces teams to do more fundraising to stay competitive. It increases the amount of community relationship building a team must engage in.

Everyone says over and over that FIRST is about inspiration. It's not about making things easier or less stressful or cheaper or even more competitive. It's not about the robot. It's not about the competition. It's about spreading the message.

Read through the criteria for the highest awards FIRST gives, Chairman's, Dean's list and Woodie Flowers. These awards are only peripherally about technical excellence and success on the field. They are given for communications skills and successful PR.

Think about that. The organization which hosts "the super bowl of smarts" gives it's highest awards not for technical excellence, but for excellence in PR.

So, when asking why are we still bagging robots, the question really is, "which is better PR, bagging or not bagging?" I think the answer lies in the line all our students and mentors deliver to everyone who asks us about FIRST. "We have six weeks from kickoff day to design, build and test our robot before it has to go in the bag." That line is PR gold. Why would FIRST ever give it up? To make things easier on the teams? To make it cheaper? To REDUCE the amount of community relationship building necessary to be top tier? I don't think so.

[Full disclosure... I hope FIRST proves me wrong and eliminates bag day. I'd love to be able to work to improve our competition bot right up until our final competition. But, I don't think that's going to happen.]

Re: Why do we bother bagging?
 

This. Especially in Québec, where at the moment we only have a regional, and the next closest is, notwithstanding districts, at a 4-hours drive from Montréal to the US, or 6-hours drive to Toronto (GTR-W, GTR-E, Oshawa), teams prefer to build a second robot to focus and be competitive for the Montréal regional instead of attending a second event, and IMHO, that's a shame. Stop build day, if there is one, should be as late as possible, i.e. the weekend before week 1 events. If FIRST is "not all about robots" as Dean and Frank often say, letting teams work on their single robot could shift money towards improving their robotics team, finding new mentors or giving students a chance to compete abroad and gain more experience.

Re: Why do we bother bagging?
 

Exactly. And I trust them to use that data in addition to internal discussion to make the decision that they consider best.

Re: Why do we bother bagging?
 

The other angle though, is that more competitive robots = a more exciting competition to watch = more sponsors attracted from passers-by who happen to see a regional and go "Oh this is cool, I want to support this."

More competitive robots = more exciting competition = easier to sell to sponsors (both at the team level, and the HQ level).

More competitive robots make it easier to make FIRST loud.