Re: ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective
 

I haven't chimed in on the champion-split discussion for a while but wanted to chime in on the aspect of FIRST one day being a highly celebrated sport or at the very least competition. Now there are numerous reasons why people are opposed to the split but I don't think the idea that we want FIRST to become as big as basketball or football is a good supporting reason. For one, when it comes down to the final match of an event, I like to look up and see just who is watching. What I see is 99% of the audience being FIRST teams or people affiliated with a FIRST team. Basically what I'm trying to say is that we aren't really bringing in new spectators no matter how great a match is going to be or how good the robots are. If we want it to become a true spectator sport, then FIRST games would have to change dramatically and probably would have to be bigger with fast paced set rules that are easy to follow. Aerial Assault did a good job at that but between 100+ Qual matches and hours of 2 minute long elimination matches, pretty much no one outside of FIRST is going to watch. I think E-Sports(Electronic Sports) is doing a good job of how to make a new sport successful.

The biggest problem I believe with FIRST being a spectator sport is too quick of matches, too many teams to follow, too many matches to keep track of and the rules change every year. Also most of the most popular sports are ONLY played by the highest level. Most people who watch basketball for example either play or used to play basketball. For FIRST though, there really isn't a pro league as everyone who watches FIRST, typically competes in it. There just simply isn't any higher level of a more condensed amount of teams to follow. I guess famous competitions like Darpa could count but those aren't really intended to be spectator event.

Re: ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective
 

I think in both of these cases there's factors other than competitiveness that play a role.

For the spelling bee, do you think that an over $35,000 grand prize might motivate some students and parents? Do you think it's popularity and media coverage might be influenced by the fact that it's owned and operated by a broadcast company?

The athletics article sights multiple reasons why athletes may enjoy higher average wages than non athletes, including cultural bias, socioeconomic privilege (for lack of a better term), the teaching cooperative skills, and this from the article:
"Also, “popular” kids might be more likely to play sports, and popularity is really just a proxy for networking prowess—something that the business world prizes."

Re: ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective
 

I'm not sure how offering a cash prize diminishes my point. In fact, it seems to indicate that concentrating the top prize in some way e.g., offering a unified rather than split championship is likely to more greatly motivate teams, similar to offering a bigger cash prize. The cash prize is all about competitiveness and what's the reward at the end. (I wasn't commenting on its popularity, but the list of FIRST sponsors include companies that overwhelm Scripps in total media access.)

On the athletics article, yes it discusses how correlation may not be causality. I may even contact the study authors to see if they can track FRC participants to separate out physical activity from social/organizational effects. Regardless, neither can we dismiss the connections that I conjecture here. All requires more analysis. That's part of the scientific hypothesis testing process.

As for the "popular kid" notion, you should see the cross country team (which I was on)--it's thin, fast robotics team members! We were far from the "popular" kids, yet I suspect that the success levels are virtually identical (except for those conferred by greater height--we're also short.) :yikes: Other athletic teams often have similar characteristics.

And BTW, "teaching cooperative skills" is exactly what FRC is about.

Re: ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective
 

If I may, do you think spelling bee participants would be less motivated if there were two $35,000 prizes, as opposed to one? Not equal prizes for 1st and second place, but regionally separated, equally valued 1st place prizes?

So if I hold that the athletics study is a sign of cultural bias, that just as valid as your competitiveness statement, yes?

Re: ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective
 

Let's (mis?)apply the result of this study to guide how we produce successful STEM-celebrating adults

Nuff said?

CD threads aren't the place where the soft (aka tremendously complex) science of the social sciences is suddenly going to snap into focus, and show us where to find the yellow brick road.

There are plenty of studies available to bolster just about any opinion one of us has.

Re: ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective
 

Splitting world champs is like creating two $17,500 prizes, or more likely, two $7500 prizes. FIRST cannot offer two "world championships" simultaneously. Winning Championsplits is worth less than winning Champs. And yes they would then be less motivated.

Yes, that study posed very interesting questions which may be more valid than my hypothesis, but I am speaking from a vary long history--over 4 decades--in competitive sports. I contacted the author and proposed including FIRST to tease out some of those effects. Competitive experience may turn out to not be an effect. But your earlier retort appeared to immediately dismiss my supposition without any support for the rejection, so I responded.

Re: ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective
 

I'm not sure how teaching children to lie (or be jerks) is relevant to the mission of FIRST. However, I (and many others) have stated how the parallel of competition between sports and FRC is an important aspect of the program. These items are consistent with this proposition.

It is my profession to apply the "soft" science of economics to guide the development of public policy over the last 3 decades. (Most recently our firm assessed the economic impact of the drought regulations for the State of California.) I work at incorporating the tremendously complex social sciences into this work to help focus on the path going forward. And I put forward these social science studies to provide guidance and to limit the scope of speculation on what might happen as the program is redesigned.

I'm interested in seeing studies that run counter to those that I've submitted here. I haven't seen them. It would lead to a better informed discussion. If CD isn't the forum for this discussion, I'd be interested in hearing where the other forum is since FIRST HQ hasn't provided a real forum for engaging on this issue yet.

Re: ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective
 

To badly misquote Mark Twain:

There are lies, d***ed lies, studies, and statistics.


Not to disparage the "soft sciences", but it can be very easy to ask the same questions to the same group of people and get the opposite result, just with some phrasing changes. And statistics can be juggled to get just about any result you want--all you have to do is be selective about the data you present.

Meanwhile, I think we've got some offseasons to play, a 2016 season to prepare for, and a distant-future championship split/unsplit maneuver to try to effect AND affect, with or without the data...

Re: ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective
 

Since we seem to have made it into new territory, I'll answer this: knowing several of these folks (no one that makes it all the way up, but their families are very into it), I'd say no. So much of the inspiration behind this effort is the prestige--particularly because it's so parent-driven. They're aiming for "THE NATIONAL Champion". Anything less just won't have that punch; this is exacerbated because it's already National. That history is critical.

The prestige (due in large part to the tremendous media and public attention) and sense of accomplishment is just unrivaled in the field, basically in academia at that age at all.

Re: ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective
 

I'm sorry if I'm coming off a combative in some way, but my point (and GBlake's) is that the study doesn't come to any kind of conclusion as to WHY athletes are more successful in the workforce. Based on your posts, I was led to believe that would be the case. It's not.

I was around when our teacher sponsor quit over the introduction of alliances in 1999. He felt it made FIRST less competitive, it "made everyone a winner", etc. He chose to only sponsor our BEST team after that. A few of our seniors quit as well. We got another teacher sponsor. My old team is still alive and kicking. To be blunt, I feel I've seen the movie before. That's my perspective on this. (NOTE: not accusing anyone of quitting, etc.)

As long as we're citing materials for others to reference, I feel Dean's speech at the Dallas Regional sums up my own feelings on what are the important factors in FIRST.

Again, Not trying to argue, I'm just offering my perspective.

Re: ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective
 

And that's a valid perspective--you've been through a previous change that seemed to be existentially threatening and FRC in fact came through even stronger than before. I have to say that the inclusion of alliances was a brilliant innovation, and I'd like to see a human-based game designed with the same feature. I'm just not as sanguine this time, and the universal outcry from so many of the teams that drive FRC concerns me that it's different this time.

Interestingly Dean's speech shows that he can get it wrong, too. He twice expresses the notion that the GDC was trying to push teamwork even further this year, and he then references the inclusion of coopertition as at least one means of doing this. Unfortunately, this year's game had less teamwork than any game in quite a while. Along with coopertition points being meaningless in the elimination rounds (at least in 2012 bridge balancing still had a role), having a less able robot on the field was actually a hazard. We played too many matches where we were able to outscore the opposing alliance by ourselves, and our alliances were able to get to 3 regional finals playing with only 2 robots on the field. This is in contrast to the 2014 game where we could make any robot a key player on the field. (Probably our proudest accomplishment.) And we could see on Kickoff Day that this was going to be a problem.

It's my concern that if FIRST HQ isn't able to see this significant misstep in the game, then I don't have confidence in whether they've properly considered all of the angles in making a bigger program design change.

And we're both in the position that we can't see the future, and we both have past experiences that guide how we view the future. It's good to know that the 1999 change was viewed so hostilely. Which brings us back full circle to the start of this particular thread by EricH, which was to get this range of perspectives, which is good.

Re: ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective
 

I'm not disagreeing with your entire point or trying to get into a broad argument, but I do have a small bone to pick with this one sentence. I don't think that past failure always indicates future failure; if we're Engineers/Scientists (or pretty much anyone, now that I think about it), then we iterate and improve. As Randy Pausch said in his last lecture*, "failure is not only acceptable, it's often essential."


* Which, by the way, if you haven't heard, I highly recommend: http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/

Re: ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective
 

A couple of people in this thread have mentioned how, since the championsplit doesn't affect your "average team" all that much, it's not a big deal, that only the top 1-10% will be affected, and therefore isn't as big of a deal as some people are making it out to be.
And I'll agree somewhat, that FRC won't die because of the championsplit. But I do think the program will take a major hit.

This isn't the only competition to have a discussion about the difference between the "hard-core audience" and the "casual audience".
The competitive Super Smash Bros scene has been having this discussion for years. What I've learned from both SSB and FRC is that no program can survive without it's "hardcore" audience.

Sure, casual, less competitive individuals and teams make up the majority of competitors, but who are the ones that makes you go "Wow, I wanna do that!"

In Smash Bros, the hardcore group is your early adopters. They convince their friends to get the games, post videos of their sick plays on YouTube, and people watch those and go "Wow, that game is so cool, I wanna play that!".

In FRC, the "hardcore" group is your perennial Einstein contenders. They start teams in their areas and post reveal videos and highlight videos on YouTube that both FIRST and non-FIRST people watch and go "Wow, engineering is so cool, I wanna do that!"

That's why people hate on Super Smash Brothers Brawl in the competitive Smash scene, because it was made to be slower and more accessible to the casual player, and it nearly killed competitive Melee.

That's why people hate the championsplit. It weakens the competition so that its more accessible to the average team, and I hope it doesn't nearly kill FRC.

Re: ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective
 

If there is one thought I wish I could banish completely from people's heads, it is that one.

Re: ChampionSplit: A Historical Perspective
 

Kevin - I wanted to see how much I agreed or disagreed with you about this; so I looked for the posts containing the "average team" phrase you quoted. I came up empty.

Which posts are you referring to?

Blake