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-   -   [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015 (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=130580)

Rosiebotboss 21-09-2014 09:51

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by rick.oliver (Post 1400911)
I find this concern not unlike the concern of district teams competing at traditional regional events.

Except a district team traveling to a "Regular Regional" can get their ticket punched to STL by winning the event or EI or RCA.

Aren Siekmeier 21-09-2014 10:42

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by OZ_341 (Post 1400909)
One concern I have is more political than anything else.
Each district event has a finite number of points to distribute to the participants. These points are absolutely critical for the success of the local teams that are involved in their first or second play.

So imagine that a team from out of state comes into a district for a travel play and wins the event, or an award, or both. Those points are permanently removed from the event and effectively wasted. Every win, every award, every draft selection, every playoff win, represents a point that could have gone to a team that needs it locally to survive.

All of these points are "empty calories" for the travel team. Now you could argue that the same is true of a local team making a 3rd play. But somehow it seems less intrusive when its within the "family".

I just keep visualizing some rising local team that is having a great year, getting crushed by a visiting powerhouse that is only looking for some extra playing time. This could make for some pretty hard feelings if that rising team misses the state championship because of this situation.

Maybe no one cares about this specific situation and I am just over thinking things. I just thinking out loud about this concern. Thoughts?

As far as I can tell, the number of "third play" teams at event is pretty low. Only a handful are typically offered within a district (even in Michigan, there were only ~3 per district). So what are the odds that this small percentage of teams in attendance takes away a significant number of the points available? I'm willing to bet it doesn't happen a lot. Sure, one team sometimes takes points away, but it would take several teams sucking up points at the same event to really throw things off balance.

Some numbers to back this up would be good, but this is the feeling I have about it.

Aren Siekmeier 21-09-2014 10:50

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim Zondag (Post 1400876)
As much as everyone on CD talks about opportunity, growth, and advantage, these are side effects: it is pretty much about the money.
FIRST doesn't make these system migrations at a loss.

While I doubt everyone involved is entirely this cynical, there is definitely truth to this. I'm sure it's very difficult to get anything by a non-profit's board if it's going to hurt their financial situation, since their job is to make sure everything stays afloat.

PayneTrain 21-09-2014 10:52

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Rosiebotboss (Post 1400914)
Except a district team traveling to a "Regular Regional" can get their ticket punched to STL by winning the event or EI or RCA.

So you are saying it's worse because district teams have the chance actively removing a regional's CMP spots from an area in this situation, or it's better because district teams have a chance to actively remove them?

Lil' Lavery 21-09-2014 12:49

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by waialua359 (Post 1400785)
You can play in an open Michigan spot and you're not from Michigan, and get no points towards qualifying at CMP.
The question isnt whether or not its a step in the right direction. I never debated that.
Its a step in the right direction for a select group of teams.

Isn't that exactly what you disputed in post 48?


Quote:

Originally Posted by Link07 (Post 1400811)
There is a difference between traditional "3rd Plays" and the new "travel districts". 3rd play spots were reserved for teams inside their own district, which makes sense. For example, the event in Michigan is reserved for a team in Michigan.

But because a team is in Oregon seems like a poor reason to be more deserving of a spot in an event in New Hampshire then a team from New York (of course, I used an extreme case.) Hope that made sense.

When the team from New York had to expectation of being able to compete in New Hampshire this season in the first place, I fail to see how allowing teams from Oregon to compete there would make anything worse. If closed borders are an issue, this is a step in the right direction, even if it doesn't help all teams. From a financial competitive standpoint, it doesn't aid district teams when compared to regional teams, so there's no "widening of the gap," either. Nobody is arguing this is a perfect solution, I simply don't see what there's to be mad about. It's a change in the positive direction.

Mr. Lim 21-09-2014 15:25

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
I really think this is a big step in the right direction.

I've never publicly stated this, but my current "dream" situation is:

- for all districts to agree upon a common points system for qualification to their DCMPs, and the CMP
- district teams can then compete at any district event outside their "home" district and still earn points towards qualification
- points from your 2 best competitions count towards your DCMP/CMP points
- teams are free to declare which district they want to be a part of (i.e. a Calgary team could declare to be a part of PNW, instead of a Canadian District.) This means they would be earning points to qualify for the PNW DCMP they declared for, not matter where they actually compete.

The big downside is the possibility of teams trying to compete in weaker districts events to make qualifying for DCMP/CMP easier. This was a weakness of the Regional model too, but I'm not sure it was ever that big of an issue. Several Canadian teams (including 610) have competed in plenty of US regionals in an attempt to qualify for CMP "more easily", and we never felt unwelcome. Would teams declare for a Canadian district, and compete in two non-Canadian district events? Maybe. Would the rest of the teams in Canada be angry if that happened? Maybe. Have you always been able to "buy an easier route to CMP?" Maybe.

There's a lot of upside too.

We like being able to travel under the Regional model. Normally we do one local event, and travel to another. We would be able to do this again. I would love to have MI, NY, OH, PA, etc, etc teams come to Canada like they used to. With the lower district registration fees, this becomes a reality again - maybe even more so than under the Regional model!

You might say we can already travel under the current district model, but it would require teams to compete at least 5 times: 1st local district, 2nd local district, 3rd outside district, DCMP, CMP. We are a team that is attempting to manage teacher/mentor/student burnout very carefully, and 5 competitions in a single season is not possible for us - I know this is the case for a lot of other Canadian teams.

From a growth standpoint for FRC, there are also a lot of benefits:

If you want to start a district event, you no longer really care what district you are a part of, or whether team is "local" or "outside". You run your event, award points to all the teams, and that's it. You probably want to ensure your local teams get spots before outside ones first, however.

If you want to create a NEW district, all you need to do is create a DCMP, declare how many teams will compete at it, and how many qualification spots for CMP it will produce. The onus then is on teams to declare whether that will be their "home" DCMP and earn points to qualify for it. They will put a lot of thought into it, and figure it out accordingly.

Already, the physical boundaries of the current district model has a few of us asking some tough questions. In Canada, where should our West Coast teams go? Should Ontario and Quebec be in the same district? Or not? A less geographically-bound system, seems very appealing to me, and would allow for even greater growth down the road.

Mr. Lim 21-09-2014 16:16

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim Zondag (Post 1400891)
http://www.filedropper.com/2014data

For everyone requesting more data:
The CSV file at the above link has international growth metrics 2013-2014, and percent growth values.

My favorite detail:
Ontario Canada had more FRC net growth in 2014 than all of the non-Michigan US states combined.
Ontario and Michigan lead the world in the growth of our sport.
Ontario and Michigan are also neighbors.

I am a native of Ontario who now lives in Michigan,
How awesome is this?

This is awesome! But I do have to say that 2013 was the year of Ontario's teacher action, which caused a 1-year hiatus for a significant number of FRC teams. The return of almost all of these teams in 2014 inflated our growth numbers for this period.

I am curious to see what our growth numbers will look like under a District model!

Ian Curtis 21-09-2014 17:28

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by OZ_341 (Post 1400909)
One concern I have is more political than anything else.
Each district event has a finite number of points to distribute to the participants. These points are absolutely critical for the success of the local teams that are involved in their first or second play.

So imagine that a team from out of state comes into a district for a travel play and wins the event, or an award, or both. Those points are permanently removed from the event and effectively wasted. Every win, every award, every draft selection, every playoff win, represents a point that could have gone to a team that needs it locally to survive.

All of these points are "empty calories" for the travel team. Now you could argue that the same is true of a local team making a 3rd play. But somehow it seems less intrusive when its within the "family".

I just keep visualizing some rising local team that is having a great year, getting crushed by a visiting powerhouse that is only looking for some extra playing time. This could make for some pretty hard feelings if that rising team misses the state championship because of this situation.

Maybe no one cares about this specific situation and I am just over thinking things. I am just thinking out loud about this concern. Thoughts?

On the flip side of the coin, it is actually important that these spots are filled and the points "eaten" to keep things fair. Each event has a certain number of points to give, regardless of how many teams attend. So, if an event has lower attendance, the average number of points awarded to each team will be higher (at a 28 team event a moving robot will likely get you into eliminations, at a 40 team event you probably won't). Thus, a less competitive team could attend DCMP over a more qualified team by attending events with fewer attendees.

dodar 21-09-2014 17:34

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Ian Curtis (Post 1400976)
On the flip side of the coin, it is actually important that these spots are filled and the points "eaten" to keep things fair. Each event has a certain number of points to give, regardless of how many teams attend. So, if an event has lower attendance, the average number of points awarded to each team will be higher (at a 28 team event a moving robot will likely get you into eliminations, at a 40 team event you probably won't). Thus, a less competitive team could attend DCMP over a more qualified team by attending events with fewer attendees.

Thats like saying the winner of GTR-W is of lesser standing than the winner of Orlando. I get what you are saying with team capabilities vs event size, but teams choose the events they compete at; so that is their choice.

Steven Donow 21-09-2014 17:54

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by dodar (Post 1400977)
Thats like saying the winner of GTR-W is of lesser standing than the winner of Orlando. I get what you are saying with team capabilities vs event size, but teams choose the events they compete at; so that is their choice.

No, that's not what he's saying. For the winners, it doesn't matter. It matters for the 'fringe' teams; ie. at a 28 team event, of the worst 10 teams, 6 of them will end up on alliances, therefore getting points. At a forty team event, the ten worst teams won't be on alliances*.



*for debates sake let's just assume that alliance selections lead to the top 24 teams being picked.

Allison K 21-09-2014 18:02

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by dodar (Post 1400977)
Thats like saying the winner of GTR-W is of lesser standing than the winner of Orlando. I get what you are saying with team capabilities vs event size, but teams choose the events they compete at; so that is their choice.

Filler teams at events (teams that don't earn points) are the same concept as surrogate matches at an event with an odd number of teams. It would break the system if a match was played with less teams than every other match, so instead a few teams fill in as surrogates and don't earn any ranking points from that match. The same is true of filler teams at events, except that they are surrogate teams for the event rather than just for a single match. The "lost points" never existed in the first place.

Edit: Oops, replied to the wrong post. Was replying to the idea that 3rd event teams are undesirable.

Jim Zondag 21-09-2014 18:07

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by compwiztobe (Post 1400919)
While I doubt everyone involved is entirely this cynical, there is definitely truth to this. I'm sure it's very difficult to get anything by a non-profit's board if it's going to hurt their financial situation, since their job is to make sure everything stays afloat.

Not cynical, just practical. FIRST is running not-for-profit business. Like any other business, they have to cover costs and obviously strive to avoid losing revenue. Registration is a major component of their annual income. They have to balance their financial goals against their other program goals like growth and expansion. It is one thing to say "everyone should switch to Districts", but it is an entirely different matter to come up with a plan to do so which has a solid business plan associated. Assessing the before and after revenue is obviously part of this business planning, and not doing things which are a big financial loss is just good business on FIRST's part. As regions figure out how to plan these migrations properly, then they can work with FIRST to do so.

IKE 22-09-2014 07:05

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by compwiztobe (Post 1400918)
As far as I can tell, the number of "third play" teams at event is pretty low. Only a handful are typically offered within a district (even in Michigan, there were only ~3 per district). So what are the odds that this small percentage of teams in attendance takes away a significant number of the points available? I'm willing to bet it doesn't happen a lot. Sure, one team sometimes takes points away, but it would take several teams sucking up points at the same event to really throw things off balance.

Some numbers to back this up would be good, but this is the feeling I have about it.

In 2013, Bedford comprised mostly of 3rd event teams. Those teams took away a lot of points. We did the analysis going in. 3 teams were on the bubble for making it to states. I think 1/3 made it. Am important thing to remember about the two that didn't make it, had they, then two that did qualify would not.
This new set up will spread "3rd" event point grabs throughout the season instead of concentrating them in week 5&6. It will also help fill week 1 which is sometimes hard to fill.

Aren Siekmeier 22-09-2014 07:41

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by IKE (Post 1401017)
In 2013, Bedford comprised mostly of 3rd event teams. Those teams took away a lot of points. We did the analysis going in. 3 teams were on the bubble for making it to states. I think 1/3 made it. Am important thing to remember about the two that didn't make it, had they, then two that did qualify would not.
This new set up will spread "3rd" event point grabs throughout the season instead of concentrating them in week 5&6. It will also help fill week 1 which is sometimes hard to fill.

Thanks for the note. I forgot that it's always the 3rd event the team attends that doesn't count, so the 3rd plays will be concentrated in later weeks. This along with a statistical bias towards certain events in a particular week can result in the situation at Bedford 2013.

But as far as I can tell, teams still use the first two in-district events that they compete at for points, not the first two in-district events they register for. So while registering for an out-of-district event in Week 1 won't earn them any points, registering for an additional in-district event in Week 1 will (regardless of when they registered for it). In this sense, teams at extra in-district events are getting "3rd plays," while teams at extra out-of-district events are getting "additional events." Is this correct?

If so, then "the Bedford problem" (wow that sounds really bad...) is only partially alleviated by this.

Steven Donow 22-09-2014 07:54

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by compwiztobe (Post 1401020)
But as far as I can tell, teams still use the first two in-district events that they compete at for points, not the first two in-district events they register for. So while registering for an out-of-district event in Week 1 won't earn them any points, registering for an additional in-district event in Week 1 will (regardless of when they registered for it). In this sense, teams at extra in-district events are getting "3rd plays," while teams at extra out-of-district events are getting "additional events." Is this correct?

If so, then "the Bedford problem" (wow that sounds really bad...) is only partially alleviated by this.

It's correct, but simply the same thing as what was previously the case, only with varying terminology. It was always that, regardless of registration, the first two in-district events that you competed in were for points.

The best way to view OOD play is as a 'third-district', only chronology of your events doesn't matter.

Aren Siekmeier 22-09-2014 08:03

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Steven Donow (Post 1401023)
It's correct, but simply the same thing as what was previously the case, only with varying terminology. It was always that, regardless of registration, the first two in-district events that you competed in were for points.

The best way to view OOD play is as a 'third-district', only chronology of your events doesn't matter.

Yep, that's what I thought. Some people were talking as if ALL additional district event registrations are now "additional plays," so that only the first two you register for will be counted for points, regardless of chronology.

Alan Anderson 22-09-2014 15:42

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by pwnageNick (Post 1400583)
It's one thing if FIRST really wants everyone to go to districts, but its not fair to penalize teams when we are not in control of whether our are goes to districts or not. Trust me, there are plenty of us in IL who wanted to go to districts, and thought/expected that we would with Indiana.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zebra_Fact_Man (Post 1400708)
If the members of the individual teams are not in control of your region, then who is? Rise up and organize. If people/teams are unsatisfied with the pay/play ratio, fix it.

The level of my involvement with the push to organize districts for Illinois (and Ohio) along with Indiana wasn't high enough for me to speak with complete confidence, so don't take what I'm about to say as truly authoritative. My understanding is that Chicago has a lot of say in how Illinois is run, and there are a lot of Chicago teams that won't (or even can't) leave the city in order to compete. That is problematic for districts in a couple of ways.

I'm still rooting for IL-IN-OH (and perhaps KY) to join forces to make a large pool of district events. They all have the same state bird, making the "Cardinal" name obvious for the region.

BrendanB 22-09-2014 15:56

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by OZ_341 (Post 1400909)
One concern I have is more political than anything else.
Each district event has a finite number of points to distribute to the participants. These points are absolutely critical for the success of the local teams that are involved in their first or second play.

So imagine that a team from out of state comes into a district for a travel play and wins the event, or an award, or both. Those points are permanently removed from the event and effectively wasted. Every win, every award, every draft selection, every playoff win, represents a point that could have gone to a team that needs it locally to survive.

All of these points are "empty calories" for the travel team. Now you could argue that the same is true of a local team making a 3rd play. But somehow it seems less intrusive when its within the "family".

I just keep visualizing some rising local team that is having a great year, getting crushed by a visiting powerhouse that is only looking for some extra playing time. This could make for some pretty hard feelings if that rising team misses the state championship because of this situation.

Maybe no one cares about this specific situation and I am just over thinking things. I am just thinking out loud about this concern. Thoughts?

Is this any different than a team inside the district attending their 3rd competition? Several teams here in New England went to their third event, won, and received no points for it. 155 sadly made a huge comeback at Pine Tree but since it was their third event they received no points and no invite to the district championship.

Steven Donow 22-09-2014 16:08

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
The unfortunate thing about that issue is that it works both ways: additional plays lead to points that could have helped other teams being removed, but at the same time (and this is just speculation, I've never done the actual math to see if its true) it likely will also raise the cutoff for DCMP by some amount.

Alpha Beta 22-09-2014 16:13

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson (Post 1401076)
My understanding is that Chicago has a lot of say in how Illinois is run, and there are a lot of Chicago teams that won't (or even can't) leave the city in order to compete. That is problematic for districts in a couple of ways.

Put two district events in Chicago, different venues, at least one off weekend in between.

If one of these teams qualifies for world champs, do they decline since it's not in Chicago? If they do, I assume that would similarly decline an invitation to the district championship. If not, then maybe they would have the option of accepting an invitation to the District Champs even if it were outside the city.

Tartan47 22-09-2014 23:04

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
*Note, everything below is hypothetical/personal observations. I don't have any actual knowledge of Illinois FIRST or Chicago teams decisions or input.*

TL/DR Summary: I am personally in favor of the switch to districts. However, I think Illinois has some hurdles to overcome first. Mainly the increased cost for many teams and the geographic distribution of teams in Illinois.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alpha Beta (Post 1401081)
Put two district events in Chicago, different venues, at least one off weekend in between.

If Illinois made the switch for 2015, independent of Indiana, I would expect 3 district events and a DCMP. I am basing this on the same layout Indiana has since Illinois had 59 teams last year and Indiana had 52. I'm also assuming the 3rd district event would be the former CIR regional. The scenario you laid out above would alleviate any additional district event costs for teams based in the city of Chicago. However, there are 2 further issues with this scenario


1)Illinois had 30 teams in 2014, or over 50%, who attended only 1 regional. Under districts those teams must come up with anadditional $4,000 (or $5,000?) for DCMP registration if they want to make it to CMP. Within those 30 teams, 13 are located within the city of Chicago. If one of those teams qualified for DCMP, they now need to come up with an additional 4 or 5,000 as well as travel costs for DCMP. (Since I'm doubtful the rest of the state would be happy with 2 districts and DCMP in Chicago).

2) All teams from the rest of the state must now travel to Chicago for at least 1 district. This includes about 9 teams from closer to Saint Louis who now have travel costs for 2 districts.

No matter where the districts and DCMP were located, if Illinois switched for the 2015 season a decent amount of teams in Illinois would feel they are getting screwed and I predict our FRC team numbers would decrease from the 59 teams in 2014.

As I said earlier, I personally want districts to happen but I also personally don't believe Illinois is ready yet.

Andrew Schreiber 23-09-2014 10:44

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Tartan47 (Post 1401122)
*Note, everything below is hypothetical/personal observations. I don't have any actual knowledge of Illinois FIRST or Chicago teams decisions or input.*

TL/DR Summary: I am personally in favor of the switch to districts. However, I think Illinois has some hurdles to overcome first. Mainly the increased cost for many teams and the geographic distribution of teams in Illinois.



If Illinois made the switch for 2015, independent of Indiana, I would expect 3 district events and a DCMP. I am basing this on the same layout Indiana has since Illinois had 59 teams last year and Indiana had 52. I'm also assuming the 3rd district event would be the former CIR regional. The scenario you laid out above would alleviate any additional district event costs for teams based in the city of Chicago. However, there are 2 further issues with this scenario


1)Illinois had 30 teams in 2014, or over 50%, who attended only 1 regional. Under districts those teams must come up with anadditional $4,000 (or $5,000?) for DCMP registration if they want to make it to CMP. Within those 30 teams, 13 are located within the city of Chicago. If one of those teams qualified for DCMP, they now need to come up with an additional 4 or 5,000 as well as travel costs for DCMP. (Since I'm doubtful the rest of the state would be happy with 2 districts and DCMP in Chicago).

2) All teams from the rest of the state must now travel to Chicago for at least 1 district. This includes about 9 teams from closer to Saint Louis who now have travel costs for 2 districts.

No matter where the districts and DCMP were located, if Illinois switched for the 2015 season a decent amount of teams in Illinois would feel they are getting screwed and I predict our FRC team numbers would decrease from the 59 teams in 2014.

As I said earlier, I personally want districts to happen but I also personally don't believe Illinois is ready yet.

Point of data for your consideration: Average travel distance to the 2 closest 2015 events for 2014 IN teams is the furthest among all districts.

(all distances in miles)
MAR: 17, 23
NE: 20, 35
FIM 20, 41
PNW 31, 55
IN: 35, 65

Blah blah blah, straight line distances, blah blah treated earth as a sphere with constant radius which is TECHNICALLY incorrect but close enough for government work.

Mark McLeod 23-09-2014 12:18

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber (Post 1401162)
blah blah treated earth as a sphere with constant radius which is TECHNICALLY incorrect but close enough for government work.

Actually, the government uses WGS-84.

Ernst 23-09-2014 12:57

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Tartan47 (Post 1401122)
*Note, everything below is hypothetical/personal observations. I don't have any actual knowledge of Illinois FIRST or Chicago teams decisions or input.*

TL/DR Summary: I am personally in favor of the switch to districts. However, I think Illinois has some hurdles to overcome first. Mainly the increased cost for many teams and the geographic distribution of teams in Illinois.



If Illinois made the switch for 2015, independent of Indiana, I would expect 3 district events and a DCMP. I am basing this on the same layout Indiana has since Illinois had 59 teams last year and Indiana had 52. I'm also assuming the 3rd district event would be the former CIR regional. The scenario you laid out above would alleviate any additional district event costs for teams based in the city of Chicago. However, there are 2 further issues with this scenario


1)Illinois had 30 teams in 2014, or over 50%, who attended only 1 regional. Under districts those teams must come up with anadditional $4,000 (or $5,000?) for DCMP registration if they want to make it to CMP. Within those 30 teams, 13 are located within the city of Chicago. If one of those teams qualified for DCMP, they now need to come up with an additional 4 or 5,000 as well as travel costs for DCMP. (Since I'm doubtful the rest of the state would be happy with 2 districts and DCMP in Chicago).

2) All teams from the rest of the state must now travel to Chicago for at least 1 district. This includes about 9 teams from closer to Saint Louis who now have travel costs for 2 districts.

No matter where the districts and DCMP were located, if Illinois switched for the 2015 season a decent amount of teams in Illinois would feel they are getting screwed and I predict our FRC team numbers would decrease from the 59 teams in 2014.

As I said earlier, I personally want districts to happen but I also personally don't believe Illinois is ready yet.

Illinois is, by my estimation, on the upper edge of a range for 3 district events. If they have 40 team Districts, there will only be two open spots after everyone gets their two plays. Add a few more teams and they'll have to jump to 4 Districts, possibly two in Chicago, one in Peoria, and one in Springfield? And then host the DCMP in the farthest SW suburb of Chicago that still has facilities for the event.

My biggest personal concern in this discussion is what happens to Wisconsin teams. We're already in a rough spot this year. Our team is based out of Catholic schools, so week 6 events, like Midwest, conflict with Holy Week. We could attend a Week 1 in Duluth, a Week 2 in Pittsburgh, a Week 3 in Kansas City, or a Week 5 in Cleveland. The shortest drive that we're looking at is 6 hours, even though there will be several close events that we can't attend because of scheduling. Boilermaker is now off the table, and with Midwest, Central IL, Twin Cities, and Duluth potentially off the table over the next few years, we might either have to get used to driving a lot or try to start at least 20 new teams.

A Wisconsin-Illinois combined District doesn't make sense, because both states have a lot of teams centered around their biggest cities and then scattered teams that would have to drive a lot to attend their second event and the DCMP.

Andrew Schreiber 23-09-2014 13:41

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod (Post 1401181)
Actually, the government uses WGS-84.

... it's a saying.

[Warning, the following will sound like gibberish to most folks]

Data was generated by putting your team locations file into a postgis database. I then geocoded all the events and placed them in another table. From there, in a fit of deciding I genuinely hated databases, I joined team each team to every event and computed a travel distance using postgis ST_Distance_Sphere. After storing the resulting table I was able to query to find the nearest 2 events for all district teams.

In retrospect I should have used ST_Distance instead. I think, however, that when I created my events table I used the wrong SRID on the event's location Point and as such had to do some translation that I was not feeling up to at the time.

So, I could get more accurate results but I'm fairly certain that the minor inaccuracy in miles is less important than the inaccuracy caused by the fact that it computes distance as the crow flies.

Mark McLeod 23-09-2014 14:05

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
I think the error due to the oblate spheroid approximation would be maybe .3% at most, so don't obsess about it.
At the greatest distance, that you happen to be dealing with, you'd see a different of 1000 feet or so.
Much less than the accuracy of the numbers you published.

connor.worley 23-09-2014 15:31

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
I think we'll see a lot of district teams on Einstein this year. The average regional team just can't get the same amount of drive time without investing a lot into a season.

Lil' Lavery 23-09-2014 15:37

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by connor.worley (Post 1401210)
I think we'll see a lot of district teams on Einstein this year. The average regional team just can't get the same amount of drive time without investing a lot into a season.

I don't think this change will contribute to that much at all. Michigan and PNW last year was the first time there really are that many additional play spots available in a district, since the district quantity is set by the amount of teams in the distrct. PNW is still relatively isolated compared to other districts, so I'm skeptical we'll see many teams travelling to there from other districts. Additionally, one of the big incentives for district teams to attend events outside of their district was qualifying directly for Championship. While a handful of teams do it primarily for travel purposes (such as 341), there are others who view it as an opportunity to qualify for St. Louis (especially in MAR). When all is said and done, I anticipate very few inter-district plays occuring in 2015. And I also expect Michigan will continue to inflate district success on Einstein.

mwmac 23-09-2014 16:19

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery (Post 1401212)
I don't think this change will contribute to that much at all. Michigan and PNW last year was the first time there really are that many additional play spots available in a district, since the district quantity is set by the amount of teams in the distrct. PNW is still relatively isolated compared to other districts, so I'm skeptical we'll see many teams travelling to there from other districts. Additionally, one of the big incentives for district teams to attend events outside of their district was qualifying directly for Championship. While a handful of teams do it primarily for travel purposes (such as 341), there are others who view it as an opportunity to qualify for St. Louis (especially in MAR). When all is said and done, I anticipate very few inter-district plays occuring in 2015. And I also expect Michigan will continue to inflate district success on Einstein.

I believe Mr. Worley might be referring to the disparity in plays/drive time between a team that qualifies for Champs by competing at and winning a single regional event vs a district team that will have played in three events (two district events and district championships) before going to St. Louis.

I am willing to bet a corndog that some regional teams might even be willing to pay $1000.00 for the privilege of playing at a regional even if they were excluded from qualifying for Champs at said event just to test their robots, drivers and strategy.

MARS_James 23-09-2014 17:00

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by connor.worley (Post 1401210)
I think we'll see a lot of district teams on Einstein this year. The average regional team just can't get the same amount of drive time without investing a lot into a season.

Hmmm lets look at some fun stats for Einstein teams:

2014:
254-Regional
*469-District
**2848-Regional
***74-District
1678-Regional
*1114-Regional
**1640-District
***5136-Regional
2590-District
*1625-Regional
**1477-Regional
***3467-District
67-District
*973-Regional
**2481-Regional
***2363-Regional

So looking at last year we have 6/16 slots held by district teams or 37.5%, Alliance captains were 50%, First picks 25%, Second picks 25%, Third Picks 50% so in terms of the teams who actually played on Einstein it drops to 4/12 or 33%. I am not sure that this change will cause that big of an issue, and I plan on checking to see if this hold true in other games.

Breakdown of Einstein Locations for 2014:
California-4
FiM-3
MAR-2
Illinois-2
Texas-1
Ontario-1
Texas-1
NE FIRST-1
Virginia-1

Link07 23-09-2014 17:16

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
At least for MAR, which has been consistently putting teams on Einstein every year since its foundation, none of the Einstein teams participated in third plays that year.

I think that the majority of teams who do four events will be within the district or trying to qualify for champs at outside regionals (of which we we had more teams than we did allocated point slots last year)

Lil' Lavery 23-09-2014 17:57

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
When discussing districts and Einstein appearances, it's important to note that Michigan was incredibly successful at reaching Einstein prior to districts as well.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=77045

Aren Siekmeier 17-10-2014 01:32

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by IKE (Post 1401017)
In 2013, Bedford comprised mostly of 3rd event teams.

With Bedford week 6 this year, and 20 out of 30 spots remaining after second event registration, it looks like most of the teams there won't be earning points again.

Barring any surge in new team registration before 3rd event and inter-district registration opens.

Alex2614 21-01-2015 23:19

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber (Post 1401193)
... it's a saying.

[Warning, the following will sound like gibberish to most folks]

Data was generated by putting your team locations file into a postgis database. I then geocoded all the events and placed them in another table. From there, in a fit of deciding I genuinely hated databases, I joined team each team to every event and computed a travel distance using postgis ST_Distance_Sphere. After storing the resulting table I was able to query to find the nearest 2 events for all district teams.

In retrospect I should have used ST_Distance instead. I think, however, that when I created my events table I used the wrong SRID on the event's location Point and as such had to do some translation that I was not feeling up to at the time.

So, I could get more accurate results but I'm fairly certain that the minor inaccuracy in miles is less important than the inaccuracy caused by the fact that it computes distance as the crow flies.

Ugh and I don't even like doing my GIS homework. I do FIRST to get away from that :P

tStano 22-01-2015 00:13

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
To me (a student on a regional team from Wisconsin), one of the huge advantages I saw to districts was that it was unbelievably fair.

For the registration fee of 1 regional, you got all the qualification possibilities of someone who went to 3 districts. The unbag time was the same, etc, etc. This is untrue in regionals. You can attend as many as you can sign up for, and you get a shot at each one. You can buy robot work time and chances at championships, (i suppose with waitlist, you can buy trips to championships too, so this argument is weak...). Now, with this new thing, you can go to a week 1 or 2 district somewhere else and get your robot tuned up before you compete for real. You've bought robot work time; an advantage over teams with less money. This isn't a huge disadvantage to the system, and its probably worth it, and my opinion means nothing, but its the first thing I thought when I read this thread.

Another thing. Switching to the district model, having everyone in it, and having all district interdistrict play count would essentially end up with what we have now, with one more tier of competition, except the districts are held mostly in gyms, and we lose much of the spectator aspect we've been working so hard to build.

Alex2614 22-01-2015 00:26

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by tStano (Post 1431962)
To me (a student on a regional team from Wisconsin), one of the huge advantages I saw to districts was that it was unbelievably fair.

For the registration fee of 1 regional, you got all the qualification possibilities of someone who went to 3 districts. The unbag time was the same, etc, etc. This is untrue in regionals. You can attend as many as you can sign up for, and you get a shot at each one. You can buy robot work time and chances at championships, (i suppose with waitlist, you can buy trips to championships too, so this argument is weak...). Now, with this new thing, you can go to a week 1 or 2 district somewhere else and get your robot tuned up before you compete for real. You've bought robot work time; an advantage over teams with less money. This isn't a huge disadvantage to the system, and its probably worth it, and my opinion means nothing, but its the first thing I thought when I read this thread.

Another thing. Switching to the district model, having everyone in it, and having all district interdistrict play count would essentially end up with what we have now, with one more tier of competition, except the districts are held mostly in gyms, and we lose much of the spectator aspect we've been working so hard to build.

Except for the cost effectiveness and the greater number of events, which increases awareness significantly. More cities and towns have the opportunity to hold events that they didn't before. We would never be able to hold a regional here in Morgantown, but holding a district event is dry feasible (we held an off-season last summer). Lower cost with easily 3x the number of events. I don see how that decreases spectator visibility in any way. People in these towns are less likely to travel an hour or more away to an event but if it was in their hometown they would. We could never get our school board or sponsors to travel to Pittsburgh with us. But with a district locally we could.

Eventually everyone will be all districts and I'll tell you why by using West Virginia as an example. What happens to us when PA, OH, National Capital Area, NC, and SC, and TN go to districts and we are not included? That puts our CLOSEST regional 10-15 hours away. With "pockets" of regional teams who have to pay 5 times as much to travel 5 times as far only to get much less playing time, these teams will either join a district or leave FIRST. We're already starting to see team's regional options diminish, as someone pointed out above in MN.

You essentially stifle growth by marginalizing teams from areas with lower "density" of teams. It puts WV at an even greater disadvantage than it already is. It is essentially punishing us for not having enough teams, but makes it more difficult for teams to start.

However, if we were lumped into a nearby district region, say PA or OH (or both) we would be better off. All districts in the US will eventually happen out of necessity as FRC continues to grow.

PayneTrain 22-01-2015 00:34

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by tStano (Post 1431962)
Now, with this new thing, you can go to a week 1 or 2 district somewhere else and get your robot tuned up before you compete for real. You've bought robot work time; an advantage over teams with less money. This isn't a huge disadvantage to the system, and its probably worth it, and my opinion means nothing, but its the first thing I thought when I read this thread.

Teams in districts were already using resources to pay for a $4000 trip to a regional competition, and they are still doing this today. Inter-district play, like additional regionals are both, at its core, a supply/demand thing. Someone is already paying for the field, the venue, and the logistics for a maximum capacity potential and teams are very obviously more than willing to part with however much money necessary to go to more events.

I'm not going to try discounting what you're saying, but I'm going to be very blunt when I say that FRC is, by its very nature, not supposed to be "fair". There are some mechanisms in place to bring in balance, but the only equal opportunity you get in FRC is that every team has to pay at least $5000 for the privilege of getting a couple boxes of stuff in January and a taped square on a gym floor in March. Everything after that is whatever your program can achieve on its own merits, for better or for worse.

Dunngeon 22-01-2015 02:03

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Does anyone have a list, or know where to find one of teams registered for inter district play? I know team 190 is coming to the PNW Philomath regional (from NW England) and I'm curious to see what other teams are participating in interdistict play.

Libby K 22-01-2015 09:14

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Dunngeon (Post 1431993)
Does anyone have a list, or know where to find one of teams registered for inter district play? I know team 190 is coming to the PNW Philomath regional (from MAR) and I'm curious to see what other teams are participating in interdistict play.

190 is from New England, but I'm also curious about this list :)

Andrew Schreiber 22-01-2015 09:16

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Libby K (Post 1432047)
190 is from New England, but I'm also curious about this list :)

Offhand, there's a few MAR teams coming to NE. I know 2 coming to Dartmouth and 1 coming to Pine Tree.

Hallry 22-01-2015 09:38

Re: [FRC Blog] Inter-District Play for 2015
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Dunngeon (Post 1431993)
Does anyone have a list, or know where to find one of teams registered for inter district play? I know team 190 is coming to the PNW Philomath regional (from MAR) and I'm curious to see what other teams are participating in interdistict play.

I don't know the individual events, but here are the district teams current registered for out-of-district district play:

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeE (Post 1429243)
Michigan:
  • 3 teams are competing in the Indiana districts (68, 107, 2474)
  • 9 teams are going to traditional Regionals (27, 141, 216, 244, 288, 910, 1701, 2959, 3175)

MAR:
  • 3 teams are competing in New England districts (102, 316, 1811)
  • 11 are going to traditional Regionals (87, 103, 303, 341, 714, 1676, 1923, 2016, 2234, 2590, 4575)
  • 2 teams are going to both New England and a Regional (3314 & 11).

New England:
  • 1 team is competing in the PNW district (190)
  • 3 are going to traditional Regionals (125, 195, 348)

Credit goes to MikeE.
*Note: 503 dropped out of the Indianapolis district after MikeE's original post, so I removed them from the list above, while 1923 is now officially registered for the Tech Valley Regional and has been added to the list.


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