Chief Delphi - [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

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Re: [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nemo (Post 1389828)

That's a cool idea. Is there a way to buy tickets without locking in the passenger names, though? I know that airlines are completely unwilling to transfer tickets from one person to another.

Southwest now allows group purchases where you can change the names on the tickets. They're advertising this feature now.

Re: [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

I was being half-serious. Most Virginia schools start after Labor Day and end in the middle of June.

Re: [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

Quote:

Originally Posted by Madison (Post 1389844)

The PNW district folks did this for teams here. They bought an assortment of tickets -- about 200, I believe -- on Alaska Airlines many months in advance and made those tickets available to teams that qualified. The airfare wasn't exactly cheap, but it did assure availability.

The overall cost was north of $100,000; the airlines are willing to bend the rules when sufficiently motivated. :)

My teams only problem with the FIRSTWA tickets was that we were able to get tickets significantly cheaper right after the end of the DCMP. Considering we bought a week before, and FIRSTWA bought months in advance, I'm skeptical on just how effective the FIRSTWA tickets were ( from a price standpoint).

/offtopic

For PNW, I would like to see the 3rd play option removed because third play teams just take points out of the system. This was especially obvious at the Week 6 PNW event, where over 60ish points were removed from the event by 3rd play teams. While this didn't have an impact on us, it did have an impact on many of the bubble teams that attended OSU and other events as second event teams. Removing third play would also allow PNW to potentially have less districts, creating space in our scheduling to remove some of the crunch time

/offtopic

Re: [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dunngeon (Post 1390141)

For PNW, I would like to see the 3rd play option removed because third play teams just take points out of the system. This was especially obvious at the Week 6 PNW event, where over 60ish points were removed from the event by 3rd play teams. While this didn't have an impact on us, it did have an impact on many of the bubble teams that attended OSU and other events as second event teams. Removing third play would also allow PNW to potentially have less districts, creating space in our scheduling to remove some of the crunch time

/offtopic

[Citation Needed]

Do you have any evidence that teams removing points from the system negatively impacted the teams they were playing at the event with?

Truthfully, I've always seen it as a net gain. Every point that 3rd event teams soak up is a point that isn't going to someone above me. Maybe tomorrow I'll work up some scenarios to see if my gut feeling is right or wrong.

Re: [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber (Post 1390144)

It's sort of a double-edged sword...in theory, it can negatively effect teams since a majority of 3rd district teams are above average; I would assume if you look at data, 3rd plays negatively effect teams at that event, but have a positive impact on teams that aren't at that event.

Re: [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dunngeon (Post 1390141)

/offtopic

For PNW, I would like to see the 3rd play option removed because third play teams just take points out of the system. This was especially obvious at the Week 6 PNW event, where over 60ish points were removed from the event by 3rd play teams. While this didn't have an impact on us, it did have an impact on many of the bubble teams that attended OSU and other events as second event teams. Removing third play would also allow PNW to potentially have less districts, creating space in our scheduling to remove some of the crunch time

/offtopic

I think the 3rd plays actually help, and only create a disadvantage for the team that is actually playing the 3rd event. If they are above you, it is possible for you to gain more points then them relatively easy. If they are below you, you are ahead and cannot be overtaken.

Re: [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Donow (Post 1390145)

Mathhammer it for me... Assume worst case scenario of 3rd Play Team wins 100% of it's matches.

Re: [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber (Post 1390144)

I think this doesn't apply in the same fashion when you're a team right on the cusp, point wise. The more teams that are on their 3rd event and rank above you are positions that you could have potentially taken.*

*This is where we start to get into a bunch of what-ifs anyways. What-if that team wasn't here? Would we still have won match XX? Would we still have lost match YY? Etc.

Re: [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

One benefit of 3rd event teams that isn't related to points is that they empower the district planning committee to put events in more isolated, small pockets of teams. Essentially, because 3rd event teams get last pick in where they get to go, they are forced to attend events that need more teams. Often times, this is a place like Maine or Escanaba, where there are a handful of isolated teams, but not quite enough to fill an event. So, if it wasn't for the 3rd event teams, it wouldn't be possible for these areas to hold an event; eventually the area would just die out because teams can't afford to travel far for 2 events. Instead, the areas are allowed to grow until they are self-sustainable.

Re: [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

Quote:

Originally Posted by Libby K (Post 1389834)

I think the move to no Week 6 this year was a great idea on MAR's part. (1923 got an invite on the load-in-day of MARCMP in 2013, this year we had a week+ to plan. Definitely way better.)

However, that doesn't help the second problem of this schedule - Week 7 qualifications to CMP, which arguably is way harder to plan. I like some of the ideas I've seen above about the district reserving plane seats, hotel blocks, etc for teams and then waiting to offer them to teams that need them. It'd be a great help to take something off the plate of teams that are already scrambling.

The PNW district is currently planning (not set in stone yet) on making our DCMP week 6 to help with the problem of figuring out CMP arrangements on such short notice. We have discussed going to having district events weeks 1-4 and DCMP week 6, as Frank mentioned in his blog, to make it easier on arrangements for both DCMP and CMP. That would require a 3rd field and all the other items to put on an event so for now the top priority is to increase the time between DCMP and CMP since planning and arranging air travel is more difficult than going across the state or to the next state for DCMP.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Madison (Post 1389844)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dunngeon (Post 1390141)

Note the FIRST WA tickets were from Seattle and mostly direct flights, I found that they were cheaper than what I payed well after those flights were booked but before the competition season began. For the teams that looked into flights from Seattle immediately after DCMP I heard that they were paying near twice what the FIRST WA secured tickets were. Teams that weren't able to get tickets until Tue or Wed were paying 3 or near 4 times as much for the rest of their tickets.

Currently it looks like there will be only 9 district events next season and none of them will be week 6. This season the dates were set when the thought was that ID would be part of the district and with greater expected growth. So depending on the exact growth rates and if the N ID teams are allowed to and decide to join there will likely be fewer 3rd plays available but they won't be eliminated completely.

Having too small of events gives teams competing at those events an advantage so it is a trade off. We actually saw a few teams that had figured it out and dropped a full or near full event to go to an event that had few teams. At one point we had an event with only 23 teams registered and then for awhile 25 teams. Before teams were locked in it did get up to 28 teams.

Re: [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr V (Post 1390294)

And that was a huge risk for Washington FIRST Robotics, had things gone south it could have meant the end of WFR. However since it has been proven as a workable system and all of the tickets were taken the current plan is to try to increase the number of tickets put on hold for teams for next season.

Note the FIRST WA tickets were from Seattle and mostly direct flights, I found that they were cheaper than what I payed well after those flights were booked but before the competition season began. For the teams that looked into flights from Seattle immediately after DCMP I heard that they were paying near twice what the FIRST WA secured tickets were. Teams that weren't able to get tickets until Tue or Wed were paying 3 or near 4 times as much for the rest of their tickets.

My only suggestion is to try and avoid Saturday night tickets flying back. We had a few people who actually missed us playing in division eliminations because we had a few of those tickets. Plus anybody who is on a flight that night misses Einstein, which was one of the best parts of champs this year.

Re: [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thad House (Post 1390296)

That was definitely noted for this year. I will be sure to make sure that is kept in mind when holding flights for next season. Some of it is driven by the fact that it is all done on Alaska and their flight availability and the desire to avoid having people have to wait until Mon to return.

Re: [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Donow (Post 1390145)

I took this thought and started playing around with 2014 data from New England. I took all the events that had teams who played more than 2 events (Hartford, Northeastern, and Pine Tree) and summed their points. I then divided the total points per event by the number of teams at the event see below:

Code:

        

event   2+ event team points        Total teams        2+ event teams        Avg Points lost

Hartford               279           39               6                8.454545455

Northeastern               75             40               1                1.923076923

Pine Tree               262             38               5                7.939393939

I took a look at the bubble teams from the New England rankings (Teams ranked below 54, I do realize that some of these teams did make it to NE Champs, but I wanted to see if this would have allowed them to make it without teams declining spots.) What I found was that 4 teams that previously did not make the cut, were now in the top 54 in New England with the added points lost.

Code:

event           Teams effected

Hartford            1

Northeastern        1

Pine Tree           2

From this, I think your statement that 3rd plays negatively effect teams at that event, but positively impact teams not at that event stands. Based on the 4 teams that were negatively effected, as well as the teams that were able to get those better rankings because of the missed points

Re: [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

Quote:

Originally Posted by cgodzyk (Post 1390359)

Code:

        

event   2+ event team points        Total teams        2+ event teams        Avg Points lost

Hartford               279           39               6                8.454545455

Northeastern               75             40               1                1.923076923

Pine Tree               262             38               5                7.939393939

Code:

event           Teams effected

Hartford            1

Northeastern        1

Pine Tree           2

Except this isn't a valid assumption. Would those bubble teams have earned those points had those 2+ event teams not been there? Ie, did they directly play against these teams?

How do you handle the fact that 155 won the event and earned a whopping 0 points. And, thanks to their prior events not being very good, did not qualify for DCMP at all?

Re: [FRC Blog] Frank Answers Fridays: June 13, 2014

The problem is that the teams who "lost" points to 3+ event teams didn't actually deserve those points. Those teams, if it was not for the 3+ event teams, would have had an unfair advantage because they would be attending a smaller event. The 3+ event teams may be removing points from the system, but really those are the excess points that were created by having extra slots for teams. Ideally, all of those slots would be filled up by 3+ event teams.