Does it add to the curse if I say this proves it *has* to be the year to end the curse....? :-)

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

Although OPR doesn't tell you anything about a team's specific contribution to the alliance score (truss, finisher, auton, etc.) it does a decent job of showing which teams bring success with them when they show up on the field. Having strong alliance partners may improve your seeding, but it does not necessarily raise your OPR since the math may "credit" the scoring to your partners instead of you. Since the scoring in this game depends so much on how the alliance works as a unit, a team could achieve high OPR by planning effective match strategies that makes their partners contribute more effectively than they might do otherwise. Having a good robot helps, too.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

It is interesting how this is both the quantity of teams greater than <average> + <1 standard deviation> AND the number of teams who will be in elims on Saturday.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

So, does that mean the wait list spots are all taken??

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

Yep, FIRST is showing that 400 teams are now registered for the 2014 FRC World Championship. The lucky 400th team was none other than Team 48, Delphi E.L.I.T.E., from Warren, Ohio. They are in the Newton Division.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

Statwistics. :-)

Seriously, why is thread still so active.
This is great analysis, but shouldn't it be in the Einstein 2014 thread?

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

Why would 100 teams per division be the target number? It requires 2 teams to play surrogate matches. Would much rather see them cap the event at 96, or 102. When you have a surrogate match your stats lag behind the other teams in your division in real time. Real time stats seem to be important to FIRST considering they now include current rank on the live match scoring display.

Avoiding surrogates does not appear to be a goal however. Of the 6 years we have qualified for champs, the number of teams in the division has never been divisible by 6.

Archimedes 2009 (Atlanta) = 87 teams
Curie 2010 (Atlanta) = 86 teams
Curie 2011 (St. Louis) = 88 teams
Curie 2012 (St. Louis) = 100 teams
Newton 2013 (St. Louis) = 100 teams
Newton 2014 (St. Louis) = 100 teams

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

anybody know for sure how many wait list slots there were?
We were finalists in two regionals and won the quality award and
the industrial design award this season.
Thought we had a pretty good shot at the wait list.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

Based on these calculations, it looks like there were 6 waitlist slots. A small number was expected, and a few weeks ago, Frank even said there might be none. As far as I know, the waitlist is generally first-come, first-serve, meaning that how you perform throughout the season has no effect on whether or not you'll get in off the waitlist (unless you qualify by performance, of course). It all comes down to who has the quickest trigger-finger on registration day. However, they might automatically filter out some teams, since none of the waitlist teams that got in this year attended World Champs last year. I know that 5 out of the 6 waitlist slots this year went to 4176, 357 714, 2073, and the lucky 400th team, 48. I'm unsure who the 6th waitlist team was, but they're registered in the bunch somewhere.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

For example, we had an OPR of 107 at SVR, but we averaged making only one high goal teleop shot each match. The OPR reflected our focus on assist scoring on the total score.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

An inflated OPR happens if you have a favorable set of alliances AND your alliance mates score at least their average amount in those matches. However, we had a favorable schedule at Curie last year but our alliance mates scored below their average (about 29 points per team) so our OPR was depressed well below our actual goal score. Another is if the entire field at a regional is scoring well above the FRC average, which could be occurring for any number of reasons, including quality of play or more fouls.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

My guess is that the pits are too small to safely accommodate 408 teams, but FIRST doesn't feel it's fair to cap Championship at 384 teams.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

Looking at relative ranking through the entire distribution (1,2,3,4), it looks like Newton is the strongest, never falling below 3rd and usually 1st or 2nd. Next is Galileo which is often 1st particularly in the mid-range and only at 4th for a couple short periods. Archimedes is the weakest never rising above 2nd and usually 3rd or 4th. Curie is 3rd with the strongest upper end, which may contributed most to its performance on Einstein.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

Considering that elims are played almost exclusively by the top 24 teams in each division, having a better top 25% of teams in your division seems to matter much more than how strong your division is below the 24th spot. Curie clearly has the advantage when it comes to comparing the teams in each division that will likely make elims.

Re: When will Divisions be released?
 

My guess is that someone thought 100 teams per division was too nice of a number not to use.