Compatition Ranking
 

With the announcement of Wins/losses no longer be tracked through qualification matches we have a situation to figure out.

Traditionally teems have been awarded qualification points via wins, ties, and losses (2-1-0 respectively), this year however the first order of sorting is not number of qualification points, but rather something called Qualification Average. The orders of seeding (2-7) are what you would expect; co-op score, auto score, etc.

I have no solid evidence on how Qualification Average works, the rule that this refers to is 5.3.4 in the game manual.

Any Ideas?

Re: Compatition Ranking
 

Read the paragraph before Section 5.3.4 starts.

Re: Compatition Ranking
 

You take the average score of all your matches and that's your qualification average (QA). That's what's used for ranking all the teams. IF by some large mathematical improbability teams are tied with the same QA then they are sorted by the tiebreakers referred to in 5.3.4

Re: Compatition Ranking
 

Why use the average? Why not just the total accumulated points? Every team is scheduled for the same number of matches, so why do we do the (extra) math?

Re: Compatition Ranking
 

Makes sense, so I guess best form of defense is to score as much as possible...

Re: Compatition Ranking
 

This has irked me for years.

Re: Compatition Ranking
 

This is not true, in some events the total number of teams is not divisible by 6, this leads to some teams playing "Surrogate Matches" (rule 5.3.2)

That being said (since the surrogate matches do not count towards the teams qualification average) why not use the total number of points scored? I believe the answer to this is just to have smaller numbers. But this in turn introduces another problem: the average is rounded to n decimal places. Therefore co-op points, auto points, etc, come into play.

Re: Compatition Ranking
 

Per page 52. The total number of MATCH Points earned by a Team throughout their Qualification MATCHES, divided by their number of assigned
MATCHES (excluding any SURROGATE MATCHES), then truncated to two decimal places, is their Qualification Average (QA).

We are not counting the surrogate match, so we would not add the points to their total.

Re: Compatition Ranking
 

Because in the middle of competition not all teams have played the same number of matches.

Re: Compatition Ranking
 

But the rankings don't matter until alliance selection.

Re: Compatition Ranking
 

I think it is to normalize the "perfect storm" random chance alliances, where 3 super powerful robots are paired by the all mighty randomized partner algorithm. It dilutes that one magic match where the stars align and the score ends up 3 times higher than your other matches, mainly because of a particular mix of robots and not so much the individual robot's performance. The average gives an adjusted and IMO more accurate portrayal of actual robot contribution over multiple matches, rather than cumulative score, where one magic match can boost a team's ranking beyond their typical performance.

Re: Compatition Ranking
 

They don't directly impact any aspect of the competition until alliance selection, but it is nice to know where your team lies prior to that.

It is also useful information when talking to other teams about alliance selection.

Re: Compatition Ranking
 

In what way does the average adjust the robot's contribution? The QA is just the cumulative score divided by a factor.

Re: Compatition Ranking
 

If that is the reason, why change it now? FIRST has always done total qualification points (or whatever the points were called in 2010).

Perhaps it is a way to normalize scoring across events for district points?

Re: Compatition Ranking
 

But mid-tournament rankings can affect strategy in upcoming matches. In a very simple (and naive case), if you're quickly trying to determine if you still have a chance at making the top 8, you may want to see the relative strengths of the teams ahead of you, and tracking the averages is more helpful than total scores because it helps normalize across # matches played. (Clearly you should be keying in on the robot's abilities rather than just their total points scored w.r.t your match strategy, but ranking certainly is an important indicator as well).